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littp://www.arcli ive.org/details/economicsoflierbeOOowen 



THE SOCIAL SCIENCE LIBRARY 



Edited by W. D. P. BLISS. 



THE 
ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER 



THE ECONOMICS 



OF 



HERBERT SPENCER 



C/.«^- 






W C. "OWEN. 



NEW YORK 

THE HUMBOLDT PUBLISHING CO. 

Clinton Hall, Astor Place. 



\ 






Copyright i8gi, 

BY 

The Humboldt Publishing Co. 



INDEX. 



PART I. 

PAGE. 

Chapter I. THE LAND.— The right to use the earth— 
The illegitimacy of existing titles — The impossibility of 
wrong becoming right by lapse of time — The indefensi- 
bility of private property in land — What system of land 
tenure can take the place of that now prevailing — The 
law of equal freedom, ..... ^ 

Chapter II. WOULD IT WORK?— Progress and Poverty 
— The Government Real Estate Exchange and the Prole- 
tarian^Land not the only tool — Free rent and diminished 
wages— The exploitation of labor by charity — The New 
York Tax Reform Association — Free Trade and the rise 
of the Capitalist to power, .... j^ 

Chapter III. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS.— Our joint 
inheritance — The application of the funds — Falling 
between two stools — The necessity for radical agitation — 
Herbert Spencer and Utopian Socialism — His ignorance 
of the development of Evolutionary Socialism — Division 
impossible — Supply and demand as regulating wages 
— Socialism the natural outcome of Democracy — 
Edward Bellamy and William Morris — Communism and 
Socialism — Competition and Monopoly, - - 27 

Chapter IV. COMPENSATION.— Intricacies no excuse 
for postponement of the question — Mr. Spencer's posi- 
tions in 1850 and 18S4 compared — Henry George on 
compensation, ..... ^ 



IV 



INDEX. 



Chapter V. GROWTH.— The disintegrating influences 
of laissez faire — The net result of Henry Georgeism — 
Socialism in England— Socialism's debt to Evolution — 
The economic mold — The growth of institutions — Indi- 
vidualist and Collectivist influences — The coming change 
— The order of tlie mental processes — Destruction and 
construction — Our present stage — The necessity for 
solidarity — The class struggle — Wherein those who differ 
can cooperate, - - - - - - 51 



PART II. 

Chapter I. CONDUCT.— The Data of Ethics— Conduct- 
Self-preservation and race-maintenance — Perfect conduct 
and industrial cooperation^Materialism, - - 65 



Chapter II. UTILITARIANISM. -The basis of Utilita- 
rianism — That life is worth living — What constitutes 
morality and immorality — Static and dynamic theories 
of right and wrong — Natural rights — Causation, - 77 

Chapter III.— EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS.— The physi- 
cal point of view — The biological — The psychological— 
The sociological— The limit of evolution in conduct, 91 

Chapter IV. THE HIGHEST TYPE. —Justice and 
happiness— A model community— Conflicting theories 
reconciled— Pain and pleasure— The highest type, - 107 

Chapter V. EGOISM. — The supremacy of egoism over 
altruism — The survival of the fittest — Free will — Admin- 
istrative nihilism — Comparative death-rates of workers 
and non-workers — Increase of suicide, insanity and 
prostitution— Parasites, - - - - 116 



INDEX. V 

PAGE 

Chapter VI. ALTRUISM. — Dependence of egoism on 
altruism — Family altruism the necessary precedent to 
social altruism — Superiority of monogamy over polygamy 
— Necessity of cooperation — Contracts — Increase of 
mutual interdependence — Failure of unqualified egoism 
— Extended pleasures of the altruistic nature — Interna- 
tionalism, - - - - - - 129 



Chapter VII. STRIKING THE BALANCE.— Need for 
a compromise between egoism and altruism— Signs of 
progress — The militant type — Social discipline and 
gradual evolution — The German Emperor — The coming 
storm, ...... 1^8 



Chapter VIII. EXFOLIATION.— Progress— The Essential 
beneficence of things — -The human will counts for some- 
thing — One-sided treatment of evolution — Exfoliation 
and the survival of the fittest — Carlyle . and Spencer — 
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — 
Class laws — Gestation and birth, - - - 147 



PART III. 

Chapter I. THE COMING SLAVERY. — The Commu- 
nistic manifesto — Voluntary contracts — The undeserving 
poor — The wage-fund theory — Capitalist exploitation 
of reforms — The practical politician — The Factory Acts 
— Why revolutionary Anarchists oppose them — Ship- 
owners and the load-line — Recent steps toward 
Socialism in England, Australia and America — The 
Pope's Encyclical, - - - - - 157 



vi INDEX. 

PAGE. 

Chapter II. THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME.— 
Why Socialistic legislation is condemned — Self-help — 
The Democratic evolution — The abolition of class-rule 
— That suffering is curative— Condition of the prole- 
tariat — The defects of human nature — The colossal 
directorate required — The case of the transition. — 
Slavery defined — Paternal and Fraternal Socialism — 
Wherein we are agreed — Benthamism — The pre- 
requisites for individual welfare — Is Herbert Spencer 
an Anarchist ? — The economic mold — Modern marriages 
— The industrial divorce — Self-preservation, - - 176 

Chapter III.— A PLEA FOR LIBERTY, - - 199 

Chapter IV.— CONCLUSION, - - - - 238 



THE ECONOMICS OF 

HERBERT SPENCER. 



PART I. 



CHAPTER L 
THE LAND. ' 

HERBERT SPENCER has been generally regarded 
as one of the leading apostles of "Individualism." 
By those, however, whose conception of " Individul- 
ism" is that it has attained its culmination in our existing 
order, it is found apparently convenient to forget that he 
pre-supposes Land Nationalization as the necessary condi- 
tion precedent of an Individualist community. I commence 
this inquiry, therefore, with a well-known quotation from 
Social Statics, for which I bespeak a careful perusal : — 

' ' Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the 
objects of their desires — given a world adapted to the grati- 
fication of those desires — a world into which such beings 
are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they 
have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of 
them 'has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he 



8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

infringes not the equal freedom of any other,' then each of 
them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, 
provided he allows all others the same liberty. And con- 
versely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them may use 
the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from simi- 
larly using it ; seeing that to do this is to assume greater 
freedom than the rest, and consequently to break the law. 

"Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. 
For if one portion of the earth's surface may justly become 
the possession of an individual, and may be held by him 
for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which he has an 
exclusive right, then other portions of the earth's surface 
may be so held ; and our planet may thus lapse altogether 
into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which 
this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so 
enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid 
right to its surface, all who are not landowners have no 
right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the 
earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers. Save 
by the permission of the lords of the soil, they can have no 
room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the others 
think fit to deny them a resting-place, these landless men 
might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, 
then, the assumption that land can be held as property, 
involves that the whole globe may become the private 
domain of a part of its inhabitants ; and if, by consequence, 
the rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties — 
can then exist even — only by consent of the land-owners ; 
it is manifest that an exclusive possession of the soil neces- 
sitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For 
men who cannot 'live and move and have their being' with- 
out the leave of others, cannot be equally free with those 
others. 



THE LAND. 



' ' Passing from the consideration of the possible, to that 
of the actual, we find yet further reason to deny the recti- 
tude of property in land. It can never be pretended that 
the existing titles to such property are legitimate. Should 
any one think so, let him look in the chronicles. Violence, 
fraud, the prerogative of force, _ the claims of superior 
cunning — these are the sources to which those titles may 
be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, 
rather than with the pen : not lawyers, but soldiers, were 
the conveyancers : blows were the current coin given in 
payment ; and for seals, blood was used in preference to 
wax. Could vahd claims be thus constituted? Hardly. 
And if not, what becomes of the pretensions of all subse- 
quent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest 
generate a right where it did not previously exist? Would 
the original claimants be nonsuited at the bar of reason, 
because the thing stolen from them had changed hands? 
Certainly not. And if one act of transfer can give no title, 
can many? No: though nothmg be multiplied for ever, 
it will not produce one. Even the law recognizes this 
principle. An existing holder must, if called upon, sub- 
stantiate the claims of those from whom he purchased or 
inherited his property; and any flaw in the original parch- 
ment, even though the property should have had a score of 
intermediate owners, quashes his right. 

' ' ' But time, ' say some, ' is a great legalizer. Immemorial 
possession must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim. 
That which has been held from age to age as pri\'ate 
property, and has been bought and sold as such, must now 
be considered as irrevocably belonging to individuals.' 
To do this, however, they must find satisfactory answers to 
such questions as — How long does it take for what was 
originally a wrong to grow into a righO. At what rate per 



lO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

annum do invalid claims become valid? If a title gets 
perfect in a thousand years, how much more than perfect 
will it be in two thousand years? and so forth. For the 
solution of which they will require the calculus. 

"Whether it may be expedient to admit claims of a 
certain standing is not the point. We have here nothing 
to do with considerations of conventional privilege or legisla- 
tive convenience. We have simply to inquire what is the 
verdict given by pure equity in the matter. And this 
verdict enjoins a protest against every existing pretension 
to the individual possession of the soil : and dictates the asser- 
tion that the right of mankind at large to the earth's surface 
is still valid ; all deeds, customs and laws notwithstanding. 

"Not only have present land tenures an indefensible 
origin, but it is impossible to discover any mode in which 
land can become private property. Cultivation is commonly 
considered to give a legitimate title. He who has reclaimed 
a tract of ground from its primitive wildness is supposed to 
have thereby made it his own. But if his right is disputed, 
by what system of logic can he vindicate it?" 

The significance of the foregoing will be readily appre- 
ciated ; and, although it is charged that Mr. Spencer 
has been for years endeavoring to shift from the position 
he took in the rashness of generous youth, the revolu- 
tionary doctrine here advocated has long since passed 
into current thought, having formed the basis of Henry 
George's Progress and Poverty. The moral results of that 
work, which traces its pedigree direct to the propositions 
in Social Statics, are pithily expressed by Mr. G. Bernard 
Shaw in the Fabian Essays"^ — "Ever since," he says, " Mr. 

* New York : Humboldt Pub. Co. 



THE LAND. n 



Henry George's book reached the EngUsh Radicals, there 
has been a growing disposition to impose a tax of twenty 
shiUings in the pound on obviously unearned incomes : 
that is, to dump four hundred and fifty millions a year 
down on the Exchequer counter, and then retire with three 
cheers for the restoration of the land to the people. ' ' 

Social Statics was published in 1850, and, in a pamphlet 
entitled The Classification of the Sciences, Mr. Spencer tells 
us that the ideas which he developed in Social Statics were 
first embodied in a series of letters on The Proper Sphere 
of Gov ernment, published in the Non-conformist during the 
latter part of 1842. In the preface to the American edition 
oi Social Statics (1865) he gives no sign of having modified 
his views as to the injustice of private property in land. 

To obtain a complete view of Mr. Spencer's position on 
the land question his answers to two other interrogatories 
must be ascertained ; the first being as to the system that 
is to take the place of that now prevailing, the second being 
as to how the claims of existing owners should be dealt 
with. The answer to the first is given in the following 
words in Social Statics : 

' ' But to what does this doctrine, that men are equally 
entitled to the use of the earth, lead ? Must we return to 
the times of unenclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, berries, 
and game? Or are we to be left to the management of 
Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc and Co. ? 

"Neither. Such a doctrine is consistent with the 
highest state of civilization ; may be carried out without 
involving a community of goods ; and need cause no very 
serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change 
required would simply be a change of landlords. Separate 
ownerships would merge into the joint-stock o\\'nership of 



12 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

the public. Instead of being in the possession of individ- 
uals, the country would be held by the great corporate 
body — Society. Instead of leasing his acres from an iso- 
lated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the 
nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir 
John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy 
agent of the community. Stewards would be public 
officials instead of private ones ; and tenancy the only land 
tenure, 

' ' A state of things so ordered would be in perfect har- 
mony with the moral law. Under it all men would be equally 
landlords ; all men would be alike free to become tenants. 
A, B, C, and the rest, might compete for a vacant farm as 
now, and one of them might take that farm, without in any 
way violating the principles of pure equity. All would be 
equally free to bid ; all would be equally free to refrain. 
And when the farm had been let to A, B, or C, all parties 
would have done that which they willed — the one in choos- 
ing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men for the use of 
certain lands — the others in refusing to pay that sum. 
Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be 
enclosed, occupied, and cultivated, in entire subordination 
to the law of equal freedom. ' ' 

It is here necessary to explain what is meant by ' ' the 
law of equal freedom." Speaking of the letters upon The 
Proper Sphere of Governmeiit, previously mentioned, Mr. 
Spencer says : "In these lettei;s will be found, along with 
many crude ideas, the same belief in the conformity of social 
phenomena to un variable laws ; the same belief ^ in human 
progression as determined by such laws ; the same belief 
in the moral modification of men as caused by social disci- 
pline ; the same belief in the tendency of social arrange- 



THE LAND. 



ments 'of themselves to assume a condition of stable 
equilibrium ; ' the same repudiation of State-control over 
various departments of social life ; the same limitation of 
State-action to the maintenance of equitable relations among 
citizens." Social Statics was written to prove that there 
is a law, the observance of which would bring about equi- 
librium, and render the cumbersome state arrangements 
now in vogue superfluous. The law is thus stated : Every 
mail has freedom to do all that he ivills, provided he infringes 
not the equal freedom of other men. 



14 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER II. 
WOULD IT WORK? 

MY readers are now in a position to understand that, 
in the first place, Herbert Spencer regards social 
prosperity as varying with the degree in which the 
law given at the close of the last chapter is observed ; and 
that, in the second place, he has laid down a specific 
system of land-tenure as the one absolute, necessary and 
essential condition precedent, without which this law cannot 
possibly be observed. 

As already remarked, the publication of Henry George's 
Progress and Poverty ; the political and social agitation 
which followed, and attained their zenith — upon this par- 
ticular point of land-tenure — in America, in 1886, when 
Mr. George ran for Mayor in New York ; the growing 
Socialist movement which, in every country, has always 
placed "land nationalization" in the front rank of its 
specific demands ; and the numerous other factors, such as 
the Irish question, which have served to stimulate the 
search for economic truth, have resulted in a thorough 
examination of this specific proposition. It will be con- 
venient here to point out the flaws that have been found, 
or that are thought to have been found, by numerous 
critics who certainly have not objected to Mr. Spencer's 
propositions upon the ground of their revolutionary 
character. 

To bring the first flaw out in all its clearness I must 



WOULD IT WORK? 15 

refer back to Mr. Spencer's own statement, already quoted, 
that private property in land may result in this, ' * that our 
planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands," and 
that all outside the owners' ring may be merely "tres- 
passers. ' ' For the sake of emphasizing this I quote again 
from one of Mr. G. Bernard Shaw's articles in the collec- 
tion oi Fabian Essays which has immediately preceded this as 
the July (1891) number of the Humboldt Publishing Com- 
pany's "Social Science Series." Speaking of the landless 
proletarian, he says: "The board is at the door, inscribed 
' Only standing room left ; ' and it might well bear the more 
poetic legend, Lasciate ogni speranza^ voi cK entrate. 
This man, born a proletarian, must die a proletarian, and 
leave his destitution as an only inheritance to his son. It 
is not yet clear that there is ten days life in him ; for whence 
is his subsistence to come if he cannot get at the land? 
Food he must have, and clothing ; and both promptly. 
There is food in the market, and clothing also ; but not for 
nothing : hard money must be paid for it, and paid on the 
nail too ; for he who has no property gets no credit. 
Money then is a necessity of life ; and money can only be 
procured by selling commodities. This presents no diffi- 
culty to the cultivators of the land, who can raise com- 
modities by their labor ; but the proletarian, being landless, 
has neither commodities nor means of producing them. 
Sell something he must. Yet he has nothing to sell — 
except himself The idea seems a desperate one ; but it 
proves quite easy to carry out. The tenant cultivators of 
the land have not strength enough or time enough to 
exhaust the productive capacity of their holdings. If they 
could buy men in the market for less than these men's 
labor would add to the produce, then the purchase of such 
men would be a sheer gain. It would indeed be only a 



16 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

purchase in form : the men would hterally cost nothing, 
since they would produce their own price, with a surplus 
for the buyer. Never in the history of buying and selling 
was there so splendid a bargain for buyers as this. 
Aladdin's uncle's offer of new lamps for old ones was in 
comparison a catchpenny." 

Now the conditions, so vividly here described by Mr. 
Shaw, are not a new development. They have existed, in 
a more or less modified form ; since time immemorial, 
through the influence of a thousand and one monopolies, 
varying with the shifting times, incalculable inequalities of 
wealth have arisen. In the vast Real Estate Exchange, 
therefore, to be conducted by the State, all obviously will 
not bid at first on equal terms, and many indeed will not 
be able to bid at all. The cry of the proletarian will still 
be therefore — "Where do I come in?" and the answer 
will be as heretofore — "Wherever the plutocrat has not 
chosen to pre-empt." 

It is, however, urged that, by the extra toll which the 
plutocracy must pay into the public till as the proportionate 
rent of the special advantages which it would immediately 
bid in, and through the equal distribution of such toll 
among all citizens, the poorest would quickly find himself 
in funds, and equality would gradually be established. To 
this it is readily replied that a system of government lease- 
holds, working under the supervision of such officials as 
plutocracy has cursed us with, would be corruption incar- 
nate ; that the plutocracy, starting at a confessedly great 
advantage, would see to it that such advantage should be, 
at least, maintained, and that prices would be "fixed" till 
chaos grew worse confounded. 

Attention is further called to the obvious fact that land, 
though unquestionably a primal, essential tool, is not the 



WOULD IT WORK? 



17 



all-essential tool. As Karl Marx has put it."* "Just as 
a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires some- 
thing that is work of man's hand in order to consume phys- 
ical forces productively. A water-wheel is necessary to 
exploit the force of water, and a steam-engine to exploit 
the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of the 
deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an ielectric 
current, or the law of the magnetization of iron around which 
an electric current circulates, cost never a penny. But the 
exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, 
etc., necessitates a costly and extensive apparatus." Not 
only does the monopoly of these essential tools give our 
plutocracy an enormous and most unequal advantage at the 
start, which advantage would, in any event, be certain to 
continue long after the adoption of land nationalization ; 
but without access to these essentials to production it would 
be impossible for the proletariat to get any start at all. If 
proof of this is required it is furnished in abundance by the 
bitter experience through which the small farmer is now 
passing ; and he, having some capital, is a plutocrat as 
compared with the proletarian. 

As will be hereafter shown at length, equality of oppor- 
tunity, is, in Mr. Spencer's opinion, synonymous with jus- 
tice, and is therefore the one thing toward which we should 
aspire, and that it behooves the State to enforce. I have 
endeavored to show that the system of land-tenure, which 
is his leading, direct contribution to economic literature, 
does not, by itself, satisfy the requirements of the case, and 
there is reason to suppose that it might even augment the 
inequality which is admitted to be the crying evil of modern 
times. For, unable to employ himself — since the posses- 

* Capital, p. 235. (Humboldt Publishing Co., 1890). 



1 8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

sion of a bare piece of land does not guarantee a living — 
the proletarian would still have to work for an employer, 
and the reduction of his rent to zero would but enable him to 
work for a diminished wage. What is shown upon a small 
scale in the following extract from a recent pamphlet by 
Miss Ida M. Van Etten, entitled The Condition of Wotneji 
Workers under the Present Industrial System, would hold 
good throughout, for it will be seen that the free rent which 
a system of land nationalization might supposedly offer, is, 
so far as the reduction of wages is concerned, entirely on 
all fours with the free lodging supplied to-day by numer- 
ous charitable institutions. On page 12 of the above 
mentioned pamphlet, published by the American Feder- 
ation of Labor, Miss Van Etten says : 

' ' We find charity everywhere supplementing the pres- 
ent industrial system, bolstering it up and making its oper- 
ations possible ; accepting its horrible results as a normal 
state of things ; and instead of bitterly and relentlessly 
attacking the root of the evil, attempting to plaster up and 
palliate its consequences. 

' ' Charity has only succeeded in making it easier for the 
unscrupulous employers of women to exploit them safely 
and respectably. By the side of the huge factory, whose 
owner is growing enormously rich, upon the spoliation of 
his women workers, it builds the Lodging House or Chris- 
tian Home, and this enables the manufacturer to pay wages 
below the living point. 

* ' The ' sweating ' system would in many cases be almost 
impossible, were it not for the thoughtless charity of 
innumerable Church Relief, St. Vincent de Paul Societies, 
etc., etc. 

' ' If these societies would look carefully into the histories 



WOULD IT WORK? 



19 



of their pensioners, they would find in almost every case 
that they are the underpaid employees of some manufac- 
turer of slop-work goods or his 'contractor' who counts 
upon the dole of charity to supplement the wages of his 
miserable workers. 

"But while thus, indirectly, charity is one of the many 
causes which tend to depress the condition of working 
women by making possible many of the exactions and 
oppressions under which they suffer, the rapid increase of 
great charitable institutions, supported by the municipal 
or State treasury, within whose walls are often housed 
hundreds of women and girls, has become a direct means 
of lowering wages, by entering directly into competition 
with the sewing women, already the most numerous and 
oppressed of women workers. And what an unequal com- 
petition ! With all living expenses paid by the city or 
State, augmented by the voluntary offerings of the chari- 
table, the managers of those institutions are able and do 
sell the labor of their inmates far below the rate of wages 
prevailing outside — miserably low as that is. 

"Sometimes this is done from ignorance of conditions 
existing among working women in the world, as the 
directors of many of these large institutions for women are 
sisters, whose vows incapacitate them from acquiring such 
knowledge by personal contact or intercourse. 

"It is, of course, claimed that the institutions do so small 
a percentage of the work done that it does not affect wages. 
But under the present industrial system, it is well known 
that a reduction of wages, even in a fraction of the trade, 
has an immediate effect upon the wages of the whole trade. 
In the Catholic Protectory, sheltering about 1,000 girls, 
shirts, gloves, men's and boys' clothing are made at prices 
that it would be impossible for a woman to live upon out- 



20 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

side. Scores of sewing women have told me that, upon 
protesting against a reduction in wages, they have been 
met with the answer, 'We can get work done by the 
sisters at these prices.' 

"In the House of the Good Shepherd, an institution 
founded for the reclamation of fallen women and supported 
by the city, the women, to the number of several hundreds, 
under the supervision of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, 
are employed in making children's waists, clothing, and 
underwear at any prices the manufacturer chooses to offer. 

"It is to be hoped that the gentle, pious sisters, who, 
unfortunately for the work they have undertaken, know so 
little of outside conditions, do not fully realize the crime 
they are every day committing against working-women. 

"I wonder if they have ever considered the ^fwew;'?zV 
causes that creates one of their inmates. The gradual 
stages from want and misery to vice and shame, the horrible 
depressing poverty ever growing greater and grimmer, the 
ceaseless grind and oppression of heartless employers. 
And when at last a bitter protest has been wrung from her 
by a threatened reduction in wages, to be met by the 
information that the Sisters are willing to do her work at 
these prices, is it any wonder that she returns to her miser- 
able tenement with a bitter feeling in her heart against 
religion, whose representatives have been unconsciously, 
but nevertheless as truly her oppressors as the most cruel 
employer. And when, despairing, she is driven to eke 
out her miserable wages by the wages of sin, she is brought, 
by a strange irony of fate, to the House of the Good Shep- 
herd to be reformed. Thus, in a vicious circle, this, and 
similar institutions for women, create the very class they 
are founded to reclaim. 

"One of the largest manufacturers of white underwear 



WOULD IT WORK? 21 

in New York, not long ago, advertised in the leading 
newspapers of New York State for inmates of charitable 
institutions to do his work at 'good prices.' 

"The officer of an institution for women in Syracuse 
answered the advertisement, asking for the prices, etc. 
She found they were much less than those paid to outside 
workers. Still this manufacturer succeeded in obtaining a 
large number of charitable institutions throughout New 
York and the adjoining States to do his work." 

As will be pointed out when considering The Coming 
Slavery this is the very argument which Mr. Spencer him- 
self there uses with crushing force, showing us that the 
effect of the old English poor-law was actually to reduce 
the wages of agricultural laborers, who, being partly sup- 
ported by the "rates," were thereby enabled to work for 
so much less. Neither the Socialist, nor the bulk of the 
organized labor movement in America, have been as yet 
able to convince themselves that a social reconstruction 
limited to land nationalization, the wage-system being left 
untouched, would not operate in a precisely similar manner. 
Should it so operate history would again repeat itself, and 
the workingman would again have been used as a cat's-paw 
to rake the capitalist chestnuts out of the fire. For the 
history of the last hundred years has been the gradual elbow- 
ing of the landlords out of the seat of poiver to make room 
for the capitalist class, whose little finger has already 
proved heavier than the loins of the feudal landed aris- 
tocracy. It is certainly, therefore, not for the increase of 
capitalist power that the workers agitate. 

I have said that there is reason to suppose that such a 
system of land tenure, if put into operation side by side 
with the retention of our competitive system as now in 



22 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

vogue, might result, not in freeing the workers, but in 
augmenting incalculably the capitalist's power. Prophecy 
is a dangerous amusement, but current events do, now and 
again, prove trustworthy guides. I submit, therefore, a 
summary of the organization of "The New York Tax 
Reform Association," as reported in the New York papers 
of June 6th, 1891. The prime mover in this matter is said 
to have been one Bolton Hall, a lawyer ; other active 
agents being Spencer Aldrich, also a lawyer ; George R. 
Read, president of the Real Estate Exchange, and the 
Record and Guide — a paper devoted to real estate. The 
report, which I take from the New York Recorder, further 
informs us that "a number of prominent business men, 
some of them large real estate owners, are interested in it. 
The subject has been quietly canvassed and the conclusion 
reached that the times are ripe for reform. It is stated 
that Gen. Francis A. Walker, ex-supermtendent of the 
national census, was the only political economist who 
declined to indorse the movement, and only two business 
men out of about one hundred approached refused their 
support." The following is their declaration of principles : 

"We substantially concur in the following principles 
for the reasons stated, or for other reasons : 

" I . The most direct taxation is theoretically the best, 
because it gives to real payers of taxes a conscious and 
direct pecuniary interest in honest and economical govern- 
ment. 

"2. Mortgages and capital engaged in production or 
trade should be exempt from taxation, because taxes on 
such capital tend to drive it away, to put a premium on 
dishonesty and to discourage industry. 

"3. Real estate should bear the main burden of taxa- 
tion, because such taxes can be most easily, cheaply and 
certainly collected. 



WOULD IT WORK? 



23 



"4. Our present system of levying and collecting State 
and municipal taxes is extremely bad, and spasmodic 
and unreflecting tinkering with it is unlikely to result in 
substantial improvement. 

"5. No Legislature will venture to enact a good system 
of local taxation until the people, especially the farmers, 
perceive the correct principles of taxation and see the folly 
of taxing personal property. 

' ' Therefore we desire to unite our efforts, in such ways 
as may seem advisable, to keep up intelligent discussion 
and agitation of the subject of taxation, with a view to 
improvement in the system and enlightenment as to the 
correct principles." 

Here follow a number of signatures, many of them those 
of well-known millionaires. 

Now it will be remarked that this is precisely Mr. 
Henry George's Single Tax scheme, to which, as the 
surest method of abolishing poverty, it was proposed to 
rally the workingmen of the United States. Among the 
signers is Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, one of Mr. George's 
staunchest supporters. The Socialists have been constantly 
and most bitterly attacked for their audacity in criticising 
the scheme, just as, I am sure, many of my readers will 
already have accused me of narrowmindedness for implying 
that no good thing can come out of Nazareth. That is, 
however, precisely what I do assert. I do not claim that 
the rich are intrinsically inferior to, or less public-spirited 
than the poor ; but I do claim that the morality engendered 
by our existing system is not of that exalted character 
which would induce millionaires to strip themselves of their 
possessions for the benefit of the workingman. Her- 
bert Spencer claimed for his scheme that it would give all 
equality of opportunity : Henry George declared that it 



24 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



would abolish private property in land, and that, by giving 
all equality of opportunity, it would lead to the downfall 
of the wage system and to a regime of general voluntary 
cooperation. These propositions have been prominently 
before the public for the last ten years, and the fact that 
astute millionaires now conclude that they can safely 
advocate them raises, to say the least, a strong presumption 
that they are not as thorough-going as was at first sup- 
posed. Men are still mainly governed by their personal 
interests, and by the interests of their class. 

Strictly cognate to this subject is the history of the 
English free-trade movement, and its treatment by the 
Socialists, under the leadership of Karl Marx ; who, in 1847, 
had already laid the scientific bases of the Socialist movement 
as they to-day exist with conparatively trifling alterations. 
When, in the forties, the capitalists — eager to overwhelm the 
semi-socialistic Chartist movement — were parading England 
with the big and little loaf, carried, for purposes of compari- 
son, side by side ; when they were exhorting the English 
workers to redeem themselves from pauperism by cheapen- 
ing their food-supply through the abolition of the Anti- 
Corn laws, Karl Marx pointed out with exceptional lucidity 
the enormous fallacy that underlay their argument. He 
pointed out that under the wage-system — into which, by 
the working of an inexorable law, competition had devel- 
oped—labor was a commodity, bought and sold in the 
market as such, and governed by the law that fixed the 
price of all commodities. Revealing by the most elaborate 
analysis the fector common to all commodities, which 
enabled them to be compared with one another and which 
therefore determined their respective values in exchange, 
he showed that the price that labor would command in the 
market must, under our wage-system, depend upon what 



WOULD IT WORK? 



25 



it cost to produce the worker and keep him in working 
order. He pointed out, therefore, that to diminish that 
cost by cheapening the food-supply would result merely in 
lowering the market-value of the labor-commodity, and 
that it was the employer who would reap the benefit. Sub- 
sequent events have fully sustained this position ; for, 
although the enormous lead which England immediately 
took through her seizure of the markets of the world 
brought labor in certain industries to a temporary premium ; 
and although the advantage thus gained has been to some 
extent retained by the workers through their trades-unions 
— to which Mr. Spencer is bitterly opposed, — it remains 
true that the rank and file of labor can to-day work far 
more cheaply in England than in countries where the 
necessaries of life are more expensive, and that therefore 
they have to work more cheaply. 

For a full analysis of this phase of the question I 
would refer the reader to Karl Marx's pamphlet on "Free 
Trade," published by Lee & Shepard of Boston. Therein 
he will find set out with great distinctness the class struggle 
as between the English land-owning and manufacturing 
powers, and he will see gauged at their correct value the 
philanthropic sentiments that flowed so freely from the 
tongues and pens of the champions of the employing 
classes. In reviewing other of Mr. Spencer's works, and 
especially the Data of Ethics, we shall see repeated the 
hymns to Liberty, and the homilies respecting Peace, which 
made the fortune of orators of the John Bright stamp. 
And, indeed, it is a principal part of the object of this work 
to show that Mr. Spencer, who has interpreted with extra- 
ordinary felicity of illustration the potency of the environ- 
ment, is himself one of the most striking examples of that 
truth ; that his mind formed itself under the influence of 



26 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. 

laissez /aire, which, though for the time being a powerful, 
was but a temporary phase of thought ; and that the decided 
set which it then acquired it has never been able to recover 
from. 

Inasmuch as in the recent free-trade agitation in the 
United States the old phenomena have re-appeared ; and, 
even in the advanced wing of the Free Trade party led by 
Henry George, employers have appeared with words of 
compassion on their lips for the sufferings of the wage- 
workers, I think it proper to append a quotation from 
Mr. Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century — a quota- 
tion that is advisedly given in the Fabian Essays. He 
says: — "Nothing in the history of political imposture 
is more curious than the success with which, during the 
Anti-Corn Law agitation, the notion was disseminated that 
on questions of Protection and Free Trade the manufactur- 
ing classes have been peculiarly liberal and enlightened, 
and the landed classes peculiarly selfish and ignorant. It 
is indeed true that when in the present century the pressure 
of population on subsistence had made a change in the 
Corn Laws inevitable, the manufacturing classes placed 
themselves at the head of a Free Trade movement from 
which they must necessarily have derived the chief benefit, 
while the entire risk and sacrifice were thrown upon others. 
But it is no less true that there is scarcely a manufacture in 
England which has not been defended in the spirit of the 
narrowest and most jealous monopoly ; and the growing 
ascendancy of the commercial classes after the Revolution 
is nowhere more apparent than in the multiplied restrictions 
of the English Commercial Code." 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 27 



CHAPTER III. 
ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 

IF land-nationalization, as an isolated measure, fails to 
provide equality of opportunity, still less does it satisfy 
in others ways the demands of abstract justice. For much 
of what is regarded by Mr. Spencer as being rightly public 
property — viz. : the raw material of mother earth — has 
entered into and forms a component part of existing wealth ; 
and, if the public were properly owners of such raw material, 
then the public are partners in all wealth to the extent to 
which the presence of the raw material embodied in it con- 
stitutes its value. Setting this, however, on one side, it is 
pointed out by all Socialist writers, and also most forcibly 
by Mr. Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward, that the 
great inventions, which we now see reduced to the private 
property of the few, can by no conceivable analysis be 
shown to be the product of their own individual toil, or 
even of the toil of those from whom they were acquired by 
purchase. It is shown by a most critical analysis, which is 
but an application of the general principles of evolution, 
that we are literally ' ' heirs of all the ages ; ' ' that invention 
has grown out of invention, and that pre-historic man him- 
self unconsciously cooperated in fashioning the marvelous 
combinations of mind and matter that to-day place the 
muscles of the universe at our command. 

It will be remarked that this is an exceedingly definite 
claim, backed up by a far-reaching analysis, and based upon 



28 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

a demand for Justice. It is in no way satisfied by the land 
nationalization program now under criticism. 

Among the many objections to the proposed plan of 
land-nationalization, there are two others which seem to me 
worthy of notice. The first is the practical question of 
what is to be done with the enormous rents which the 
State will be in receipt of; since, with all enterprise in 
individual hands, the State would be at a loss to find a 
ready investment. In America Mr. George proposes to 
use the fund in Heu of all other taxation ; a proposition 
which, as it has appeared to the Socialists, would be robbing 
Peter to pay Paul, taxing the landlords for the sake of 
freeing the capitalists from all responsibilty. In England, 
where they are not blessed with our enormous protective 
tariff, the question of the social alterations in the competi- 
tive system that the investment of such a public revenue 
would necessitate has excited much attention. As Mr. 
Bernard Shaw has dealt with the point in a sprightly and 
most incisive way I shall make no apology for quoting 
from him again. He tells us that "the results of such a 
proceeding," — i. e. taxing the landlords twenty shillings on 
the pound — "if it actually came off, would considerably 
take its advocates aback. The streets would presently be 
filled with starving workers of all grades, domestic servants, 
coach builders, decorators, jewelers, lace-makers, fashionable 
professional men, and numberless others whose livelihood 
is at present gained by ministering to the wants of these 
and of the proprietary class. 'This,' they would cry, 'is 
what your theories have brought us to ! Back with the 
good old times, when we received our wages, which were 
at least better than nothing.' Evidently the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer would have three courses open to him. (i.) 
He could give the money back again to the landlords and 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 29 

capitalists with an apology. (2.) He could attempt to 
start State industries with it for the employment of the 
people. (3.) Or he could simply distribute it among the 
unemployed. The last is not to be thought of: anything 
is better than panevi et circenses. The second (starting 
State industries) would be far too vast an undertaking to 
get on foot soon enough to meet the urgent difficulty. 
The first (the return with an apology) would be a rediictio 
ad absurdum of the whole affair — a confession that the 
private proprietor, for all his idleness and his voracity, is 
indeed performing an indispensable economic function — 
the function of capitalizing, however wastefully and viciously, 
the wealth which surpasses his necessarily limited power 
of immediate personal consumption. And here we have 
checkmate to mere Henry Georgeism, or State appropria- 
tion of rent without Socialism. It is easy to show that the 
State is entitled to the whole income of the Duke of West- 
minster, and to argue therefrom that he should straightway 
be taxed twenty shillings in the pound. But in practical 
earnest the State has no right to take five farthings of 
capital from the Duke or anybody else until it is ready to 
invest them in productive enterprise. The consequences 
of withdrawing capital from private hands merely to lock 
it up unproductively in the treasury would be so swift and 
ruinous, that no statesman, however fortified with the 
destructive resources of abstract economics, could persist 
in it. It will be found in the future as in the past that gov- 
ernments will raise money only because they want it for 
specific purposes, and not on a priori demonstrations that 
they have a right to it. But it must be added that when 
they do want it for a specific purpose, then, also in the 
future as in the past, they will raise it without the slighest 
regard to a priori demonstrations that they have no right 



30 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



to it. Here then we have got to a dead lock. In spite of 
democrats and land nationalizers, rent cannot be touched 
unless some pressure from quite another quarter forces 
productive enterprise on the State. Such pressure is 
already forthcoming." 

The other objection is that it is still impossible to get 
satisfactory results from putting new wine into old wine- 
skins ; a reflection that I have anticipated in my criticism 
of the Real Estate Exchange as run by the class of poli- 
ticians our present system has generated. For it is to be 
expected that the adoption of communism in land, coupled 
with the rigid retention of individual competition in all 
forms of industry, would prove at once an innovation very 
difficult to introduce, and a most severe wrench upon the 
logical consistency which individuals and communities alike 
endeavor, with more or less earnestness, to realize in actual 
life. With continually increasing asperity it is pointed out 
by the army of hostile critics to which the ' ' conventional 
lies of our civilization" have given birth that our present 
system rests upon no logical basis. It is demonstrated 
that the rich grind the faces of the poor, and absorb their 
weaker rivals, in the name of "individualism," and defend 
their acquisitions in the name of "the public weal ;" laud- 
ing the institutions that have proved to them so profitable 
as necessary for the maintenance oi society, and calling on 
society to tax itself, with annually increasing severity, for 
the support of the bayonet and the policeman's club, 
together with all the paraphernalia of so-called "justice" 
behind which property has succeeded in entrenching itself 
This criticism reminds the masses that they are tricked 
with maxims which their masters laugh at in their sleeves. 
It is therefore spreading rapidly, and, inasmuch as it is a 
genuine criticism which points to an absolutely illogical, 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 31 

and therefore indefensible condition of affairs, it will not 
down until logic is restored to actual life. Such a restora- 
tion can perhaps be conceived as possible in the adoption 
of a complete individualism all along the line, whereby 
every man shall be expected and allowed to play for his 
own hand, and the victor shall be recognized as entitled to 
the spoils.* Or, on the other hand, logic can be restored 
by the adoption and actual practice of the philosophy 
which makes the welfare of the humblest individual the 
concern of all — a socialistic philosophy that would urge 
every member of society to see that affairs were so ordered 
as to realize the following Utopia which Mr. Spencer him- 
self gives in his Data of Ethics : ' ' The citizens of a large 
nation industrially organized have reached their possible 
ideal of happiness when the producing, distributing, and 
other activities are such in their kinds and amounts that 
each citizen finds in them a place for all his energies and 
aptitudes, while he obtains the means of satisfying all his 
desires." 

The point here made, therefore, is that the mixture of 
communism in land, and individualism in all branches of 
production and exchange, would content no one ; and a 
moment's consideration will show that, if brought into 
operation to-morrow, land-nationahzation could not, by 
itself, satisfy the aspirations of either collectivists or individ- 
ualists. For to the former it would always seem but an 
installment of reform, representing a life that still "crept 
along on crippled wing" ; while the latter — your pushing, 
practical, typical business man, understanding that he had 

* "Lord Bramwell will give cogent reasons for the belief that 
absolute freedom of contract, subject to the trifli?ig exceptio7t of a 
drastic criminal law, will ensure a perfect state." — Fabian Essays, 
p. 6. (Humboldt Pub. Co.) 



32 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



still to be the architect of his own fortune, would perpetually 
chafe at the illogical distinction which permitted him to 
exploit for his own private benefit all human society, but 
placed, in the name of society, on every foot of land the 
warning — "Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost 
rigor of the law." 

We may, however, rest assured that so revolutionary a 
proposition as communism in land can be carried into effect 
only after an agitation so profound that every existing 
social institution will have been submitted to the most 
critical review, and public thought remodeled throughout. 
It is precisely here that the insufficiency of the movement 
suggested by Mr. Spencer, and carried into effect by Henry 
George, becomes apparent. A society that is still content 
to think it justifiable to exploit one's neighbor at every 
turn — the matter of "cornering" land alone excepted — 
will never muster the energy needful to cast the whole of 
its social philosophy into the crucible of unsparing criti- 
cism ; it will never face the lions that bar the way to so 
radical a reform. For the truth of this position I refer to 
the history of the George movement here in the United 
States, and to the history of Mr. Spencer's own personality. 
He enunciated his revolutionary doctrine respecting land 
forty-one years ago. He has scarcely referred to it since 
in all his voluminous writings, such occasional mention as 
he has condescended to make being merely for the sake of 
emphasizing the necessity of fully compensating existing 
proprietors — a matter that will be subsequently treated. 
Considering that the abolition of private j^roperty in land is 
the absolutely indispensable basis on which the whole of 
the Spencerian individualism rests, the failure of Mr. 
Spencer to iterate and re-iterate it is, to say the least, 
remarkable. Suppressio veri expressio falsi : to conceal the 
truth is tantamount to a willful misleading of the masses. 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 33 

Were this the proper place I should also here point out 
that the institution of private property in all the means of 
production and distribution is now on trial, not merely as 
failing to satisfy the requirements of abstract justice, but 
still more from the point of view of an advanced and far- 
seeing utilitarianism. We shall have, however, occasion 
to consider this position later on, when examining Mr. 
Spencer in his character of a professed utilitarian. I wish 
here merely to call attention to the reference, already 
quoted, to "Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co." 

As Mr. Bliss has pointed out in his preface to Socialism, 
by John Stuart Mill,* Mill knew only "the Socialism of 
Owen, of St. Simon, of Fourier, of Cabet, of the 'static' 
Socialists." This also is the only Socialism that Mr. 
Spencer appears to know, and throughout his later writings 
no sign is given of his being aware that to these, represent- 
ing as they did the Utopian stage, two generations have 
succeeded who have applied the methods of Darwin to the 
elucidation of economics, and are entirely at one with Mr. 
Spencer himself in their treatment of society as an organic 
growth. It is, moreover, impossible to have any consider- 
able acquaintance with the writings of such men as Marx, 
Engels, Bebel, Carpenter, Gronlund, and many other Social- 
ist authors who could be named, without awaking to a 
recognition of the fact that the incalculable service rendered 
by evolution, through the elucidation and logical arrange- 
ment of events that had previously appeared unconnected 
and causeless, is now being in its turn rendered to evolution 
by Socialism. It is extending the inquiry boldly from the 
domain of the infinitely little to that of the infinitely great ; 
and, by the firmness of its grasp -on the leading economic 

* Humboldt Publishing Company. Social Science Library, 
No. 2. February, 1891. 



34 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



causes that shape the course of nations, and are the molds 
from which their social, religious and political institutions 
take their forms, it is re-writing all history and literature 
by the hght of the evolutionary philosophy, 

I shall have occasion later on, when reviewing the Data 
of Ethics, to show that this ignorance renders Mr. Spen- 
cer's criticism merely the criticism of a supposed position, 
and therefore absolutely without value. It is in order, 
however, here to state that the reference to "Messrs. 
Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co." is followed immedi- 
ately in Social Statics by a criticism of the (supposed) 
scheme of "what is usually called Socialism or Commu- 
nism." The passage is as follows : 

' ' Plausible though it may be, such a scheme is not 
capable of realization in strict conformity with the moral 
law. Of the two forms under which it may be presented, 
the one is ethically imperfect ; and the other, although 
correct in theory, is impracticable. Thus, if an equal por- 
tion of the earth's produce is awarded to every man, 
irrespective of the amount or quality of the labor he has 
contributed toward the obtainment of that produce, a 
breach of equity is committed. Our first principle requires, 
not that all shall have like shares of the things which 
minister to the gratification of the faculties, but that all 
shall have like freedom to pursue those things — shall have 
like scope." 

"If an equal portion of the earth's produce, etc." The 
Socialist agitation has spread itself so widely, and permeated 
literature so generally, that all who have any pretensions to 
economic knowledge are to-day aware that the last thing 
Socialism dreams of is division. On the contrary it bases 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 35 

itself on the strictly evolutionary ground that the growth 
of the social organism, greatly through the improved 
methods of communication that render the modern world 
one country, has rendered combination not only feasible 
but inevitable. Instead of representing division, therefore, 
Socialism is combination personified ; and, believing with 
Buckle that "all true history is the history of tendencies," 
it preaches combination, not as a Utopia desirable upon 
grounds of abstract morality or co7ivenience, but as an 
irresistible developtnent. 

I shall hereafter call attention to Mr. Spencer's treat- 
ment, in very recent writings, of the ' ' wages-fund theory ' ' 
as an axiomatic truth ; there being shown no consciousness 
of the fact that John Stuart Mill gave it up as untenable 
years ago, and that it has been since repudiated by every 
economist of established reputation. I wish here to empha- 
size the fact that Mr. Spencer's crude conceptions of the 
schejnes of Socialism are given in an edition of Social Statics, 
approved and prefaced by himself, and dated in 1865 — 
that is to say, some twenty years after the position of 
Socialism, as an evolutionary interpreter of growth, had 
been fully set before the world by Karl Marx, Lassalle and 
others, all of whom specifically disclaimed all sympathy 
with or belief in abstract Utopian schemes. 

Having thus disposed of what he considers one of the 
two propositions of Socialism or Communism (the expres- 
sions being throughout treated by him as synonymous) 
Mr. Spencer considers the other in the following words : 
"If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him a 
share of produce proportionate to the degree in which he 
has aided production, the proposal, while it is abstractedly 
just, is no longer practicable. Were all men cultivators of 



36 ECONOMICS OF HEkBER T SPENCER. 

the soil, it would perhaps be possible to form an approx- 
imate estimate of their several claims. But to ascertain 
the respective amounts of help given by different kinds of 
mental and bodily laborers, toward procuring the general 
stock of the necessaries of life, is an utter impossibility. 
We have no means of making such a division save that 
afforded by the law of supply and demand, and this means 
the hypothesis excludes." To which he appends the 
following curious foot-note: "These inferences do not at 
all militate against joint-stock systems of production and 
living, which are in all probability what Socialism prophe- 
sies." I speak of this foot-note as "curious," since it 
shows that, so recently as 1865, Mr. Spencer's conception 
of Socialism was that it was identical with the private 
cooperation movement. 

' ' If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him 
a share of the produce proportionate to the degree in 
which he has aided production," etc. It is necessary here 
to use language carefully. Had the phrase employed been 
"shall receive from society in proportion to the value of the 
sacrifices he has made on behalf of society," it would have 
correctly represented the general position of Socialists on 
the question of remuneration, a position fortified by numer- 
ous scientific arguments which will be reviewed when con- 
sidering the Data of Ethics and subsequent works. It is, 
when measured by the time devoted, no such utter impossi- 
bility as Mr. Spencer supposes to gauge the sacrifices 
made ; while, on the other hand, the law of supply and 
demand offers no measure worthy of the name. For, in 
the first place, monopoly, which competition has quite 
naturally ended in, to-day controls this celebrated law, 
and has "supply" entirely at its command; and, in the 
second place, if there is one thing that has hitherto failed 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 37 

to satisfy the demands of abstract justice, it is this very 
law. Under it, it is precisely those who work the longest 
hours at the most arduous, dangerous and unhealthy tasks, 
who earn the least ; and, in consequence of our reliance 
on it, so orthodox and conservative an authority as John 
Stuart Mill was forced to the conclusion that * ' hitherto it 
is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made 
have lightened the day's toil of any human being." 

Before, however, quitting this branch of the subject I 
would correct any misapprehension that may have arisen 
from my mention of the facility with which the individual's 
sacrifices on behalf of the community could be gauged by 
measuring the time devoted to the community's service. 
It is true that, as Karl Marx and others have shown, the 
exchange value of goods is set, in the first instance, by the 
average time required for their production ; and that, upon 
this account, many Socialists have considered that time 
devoted to the service of the commonwealth should be the 
measure of reward. It has also been repeately urged that, 
where work is specially exhausting or dangerous, shorter 
hours should be considered as entitHng to the same remu- 
neration as longer hours spent at safer or less exhausting 
occupations. By those who have been at the trouble of 
elaborating these views it is insisted that the requirements 
of abstract justice would be thus entirely satisfied ; that we 
have long since passed the age of small and isolated indus- 
tries, during which alone it might have been possible to 
give the producer all his product; that, therefore, the 
object now should be to recompense the worker fully for 
the labor he has put upon the joint product, and that is 
best calculated by the time measure. It is almost needless 
to remark that trades-unionism has long been working in 
this direction. 



38 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

Speaking for myself, such propositions do not interest 
me greatly. They appear to me to be relics of the Utopian 
epoch, which is itself a relic of the old feudal conception 
that it was possible for the few to map out the lives of the 
many in a fashion that would prove entirely satisfactory. 
My understanding of Socialism is very different. I appre- 
hend that the true philosophy of Socialism is the scientific 
and evolutionary one that conceives it as a natural develop- 
ment of the democratic idea, which, since the Protestant 
Reformation, we have been endeavoring to realize in the 
religious field, just as throughout this century, we have 
been trying to introduce it into the field of politics. Quite 
naturally the thought has grown that there is no reason 
why this idea should be confined to religion and to politics ; 
but that, in order to bring about true democracy in these, 
we must go logically on, and democratize our industrial 
institutions. If this conception be true, it follows that the 
attempt to anticipate the future, by starting with elaborate 
regulations for the reward of labor, is altogether premature ; 
since, by the very hypothesis, the people must be free to 
make such arrangements among themselves as may, from 
time to time, appear to satisfy the justice of the case. What 
Socialism seeks to do is to put the people in a position 
where they can make such arrangements for themselves. 
It seeks, therefore, to abolish monopoly, and to put the 
means of production and distribution at Xh&free disposition 
of the people — one and all. 

A word upon the two Utopian romances that have of 
late attracted the attention of the reading world — Looking 
Backward, and News from Nowhere. Far be it from me 
to suggest that no good is accomplished by holding up a 
lofty ideal. Such ideals are of incomparable value, but the 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 39 

limits of such constructive work are quickly seen, and nat- 
urally made the most of by the industries that have the 
strongest possible objection to being democratized. News 
from Nowhere was doubtless intended as a counter-blast to 
Looking Backward, but both show, in an exactly similar 
degree, the insuperable difficulties under which the artists 
labored. Mr. Bellamy fixed his thought upon the condi- 
tions of to-day, and, with the mammoth factory as his 
model, conceived the industrial army of the future, Mr. 
Morris went back to Medievalism, of which he has always 
been an enthusiastic student, and constructed a model com- 
monwealth upon the lines of the Renaissance. They are, 
therefore, mere predictions, and are entitled to just the 
weight that individual predictions may be supposed to have 
as to the final outcome of a question that must be settled 
by the co7isensus of several hundred million minds. 

I devote considerable space here, and in subsequent 
chapters, to emphasizing the evolutionary and anti-Utopian 
character of modern Socialism, which is a stern movement, 
having little place in it for dreams. It is an easy task for 
the Pope, and all the countless enemies of progress, to 
select some one detail of some one Utopian scheme, to 
criticise it, and to condemn the whole science of industrial 
evolution by exhibiting the shortcomings of the detail 
criticised. The principal evil they effect is the despondency 
into which they cast that portion of the progressive element 
which, yearning for a change, has been so foolish as to pin 
its faith to the infallibility of some single Utopian dream. 
As showing how far a most capable Socialist may differ 
on these details from both Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Morris, I 
quote from Graham Wallas's "Property under Socialism," 
in the Fabia7i Essays. He says : — "In considering how far 
the State has a claim upon the services of its members. 



40 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

we come upon the much larger question — How far are we 
working • for SociaHsm ; and how far for Communism ? 
Under pure Socialism, to use the word in its narrowest 
sense, the State would offer no advantage at all to any 
citizen except at a price sufficient to pay all the expenses 
of producing it. In this sense the Post Office, for example, 
is now a purely Socialistic institution. Under such condi- 
tions the State would have no claim at all on the service of 
its members ; and compulsion to work would be pj^oduced by 
the fad that if a man chose not to work he would be in danger 
of starvation. Under pure Communism, on the other hand, 
as defined by Louis Blanc's dictum: 'From every man 
according to his powers : to every man according to his 
wants,' the State would satisfy without stint and without 
price all the reasonable wants of any citizen. Our present 
drinking fountains are examples of the numerous cases of 
pure communism which surround us." It will be noticed 
that the line between Socialisrn and Communism is very 
clearly drawn, whereas Mr. Spencer invariably treats the 
two as synonymous. 

Returning to supply and demand, as affording the most 
workable method of reward, it will, of course, be pointed 
out that they have never had a fair chance, owing to the 
monopolization of the soil. This is, indeed, the main argu- 
ment of the school that, in the United States, has grouped 
itself around Henry George. I have already anticipated 
this objection by showing that bare land is not the only 
necessary tool ; and that, so long as the competitive wage- 
system prevails, and the nation is divided into the two 
classes of employers and employed, labor will be a com- 
modity the price of which is fixed as the price of all other 
commodities is fixed. 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 41 

But, apart from all this, we can both by deduction and 
by the safer inductive method, attack the question from 
another side. Just laws foster a nation's development; 
unjust laws retard it. The construction of railroads fosters 
development ; their absence is a serious drawback. But it 
is a drawback shared by all the inhabitants of the country, 
in spite of which they develop ; and, warring with one 
another under a competitive system, they attain vastly 
different stages of development ; some rolling in wealth, 
others finding their burial place in the potter's field. The 
same result holds, though in a more marked degree, where 
natural disadvantages have been minimized by the intro- 
duction of railroads, and that the differences becomes rap- 
idly more decided is entirely natural. For, as men with 
Winchester rifles do incomparably more harm to one 
another, when they engage in conflict, than do children 
whose only weapon is the pop-gun, so, with every increase 
in his power, does the result of man's war with his fellow- 
man become more fatal. The system of competition is 
therefore rotten at the core ; its active principle may be 
stated in Mr. Spencer's own striking phrase as "commer- 
cial cannibalism." It accordingly produces everywhere 
the same results. It will work itself out, more or less pro- 
nouncedly, in the same way, whether the country be in the 
barbaric stage where there are no railroads, or in the 
advanced stage in which electricity will shortly land us ; 
whether the country be cursed by unjust, barbaric laws, or 
whether the laws be carefully framed to insure fair play, 
and to prevent hitting below the belt. For it is^ of the 
essence of warfare to try to hit below the belt, and, no 
matter how fine the sentiments that the belligerent parties 
may agree to embody in their codes, their actual philos- 
ophy will always be that ' ' all is fair in war. ' ' The story 



42 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



of the daily and hourly stratagems which our commercial 
classes, despite their dread of criminal prosecution, employ 
to cheat the law is self-sufficient proof. So much for the 
deductive argument. 

Turning to the inductive method, and forecasting the 
future by the experience of the past, we have, for instance, 
seen a whole class — the bourgeoisie — rise into power ; 
and similarly we have seen a whole nation — the Jews. 
Trodden under foot by the land-owning aristocracy, the 
members of this class, and of this nation, nevertheless 
developed ; and, as between themselves, developed very 
unequally, although the deprivation of access to the soil 
was for all of them equal. They were, to refer to my 
previous illustration, as between themselves joint occupiers 
of a country that lacked the advantages of a railroad, yet 
they nevertheless differentiated into rich and poor. Nor 
can it be said that this differentiation only set in when a 
portion of the members obtained access to the land ; for 
the bourgeoisie, as a class, have not invested largely in 
land, while the Jews, as a nation, have concentrated their 
energies upon obtaining control of the department of 
exchange. What warrant, therefore, does history give us 
that the experience of the bourgeoisie as a class, and of 
the Jews as a nation — all equally working under the disad- 
vantage of exclusion from the soil — will not be repeated on 
the body of a whole nation, all the members of which are 
equal partners in the soil? It is submitted here that induc- 
tion and deduction alike prove that, whatever temporary 
relief may be given, the same results will eventually be 
reached, and that history will repeat itself indefinitely until 
the regime of individualistic competitive warfare shall have 
been replaced by the regime of cooperative unity. Such 
a replacement is not confined merely to the enactment of 



ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 43 

measures whereby each shall be secured equal opportunity 
with each in both land and the general resources of our 
inherited civilization. It means the conception and accept- 
ance, in both thought and action, of a new idea ; for where 
the spirit is lacking the law will ever remain a dead letter. 
Such a conception has not been entertained by Mr. Herbert 
Spencer who, nourished upon an early diet of laissez faire, 
has confined himself to the advocacy, over forty years ago, 
of a single measure to stop hitting below the belt. Nor 
has it been entertained by Mr. Henry George, who, follow- 
ing far more boldly in the footsteps of his master, remains 
like him the champion of competition. 



44 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER IV. 

COMPENSATION. 

WE pass now to the consideration of the second 
question involved in Mr. Spencer's statement of 
land nationalization, viz.: How are the existing 
owners to be treated? The answer given in Social Statics 
is as follows : 

"No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, 
by mankind at large, of their rights to the soil. The 
question of compensation to existing proprietors is a com- 
plicated one — one that perhaps cannot be settled in a 
strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the 
parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage 
we might make short work of the matter. But, unfortu- 
nately, most of our present landowners are men who have 
either mediately or immediately — either by their own acts, 
or by the acts of their ancestors — given for their estates 
equivalents of honestly earned wealth, believing that they 
were investing their savings in a legitimate manner. To 
justly estimate and liquidate the claims of such is one of 
the most intricate problems society will one day have to 
solve. But with this perplexity and our extrication from 
it abstract morality has no concern. Men having got 
themselves into the dilemma by disobedience to the law 
must get out of it as well as they can, and with as little 
injury to the landed class as may be. Meanwhile, we shall 
do well to recollect that there are others besides the landed 



COMPENSA TION. 45 

class to be considered. In our tender regard for the 
vested interests of the few let us not forget that the rights 
of the many are in abeyance ; and must remain so, as long 
as the earth is monopolized by individuals. Let us remem- 
ber, too, that the injustice thus inflicted on the mass of 
mankind is an injustice of the gravest nature. The fact 
that it is not so regarded proves nothing. In early phases 
of civilization even homicide is thought lightly of. The 
suttee of India, together with the practice elsewhere 
followed of sacrificing a hecatomb of human victims at the 
burial of a chief, shows this : and probably cannibals con- 
sider the slaughter of those whom 'the fortune of war' has 
made their prisoners, perfectly justifiable. It was once 
also universally supposed that slavery was a natural and 
quite legitimate institution — a condition into which some 
were born, and to which they ought to submit as to a 
divine ordination ; nay, indeed, a great proportion of man- 
kind hold this opinion still. A higher social development, 
however, has generated in us a better faith, and we now to 
a considerable extent recognize the claims of humanity. 
But our civilization is only partial. It may by and by 
be perceived that Equity utters dictates to which we have 
not yet listened ; and men may then learn that to deprive 
others of their rights to the use of the earth is to commit a 
crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking 
away their lives or personal liberties. ' ' 

Such were the sentiments of Mr. Spencer in 1850 — 
repeated again in 1865 — respecting the question of com- 
pensation. It needs no special skill in reading between 
the lines to see that he considered the compensation a 
secondary detail of comparative unimportance ; the main 
point emphasized being that private property in land is 



46 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

robbery, and must therefore be abolished. Upon this point 
Henry George himself has used no stronger language. 
Yet, writing in 1884 against Socialism, under the title of 
The Coming Slavery, Mr. Spencer — who had not ventured 
for years to touch upon his own previous declaration as to 
the iniquity of private property in land — could write as 
follows, the passage quoted being intended as a warning 
from the watch-tower. ' ' Meanwhile, ' ' he says, ' ' there goes 
on out-of-doors an active propaganda to which all these 
influences are ancillary. Communistic theories, partially 
indorsed by one Act of Parliament after another, and 
tacitly if not avowedly favored by numerous public men 
seeking supporters, are being advocated more and more 
vociferously under one or other form by popular leaders, 
and urged on by organized societies. There is the move- 
ment for land-nationalization which, aiming at a system of 
land-tenure equitable in the abstract, is, as all the world 
knows, pressed by Mr. George and his friends with avowed 
disregard for the just claims of existing owners, and as the 
basis of a scheme going more than half-way to State- 
socialism. And then there is the thorough-going Demo- 
cratic Federation of Mr. Hyndman and his adherents. We 
are told by them that 'the handful of marauders who now 
hold possession [of the land] have and can have no right 
save brute force against the tens of millions whom they 
wrong.'" If there are to-day thousands who consider 
private property in land one of the most oppressive and 
indefensible forms of robbery, they are certainly entitled to 
point to Mr. Spencer as one of their instructors. 

Mr. George has repeatedly stated his position on the 
question of compensation, and there are many passages 
from which one could select. I take the following from 
Property in Land: — "The repetition of a wrong may dull 



COMPENSA TION. 



47 



the moral sense, but will not make it right. A robbery is 
no less a robbery the thousand millionth time it is com- 
mitted than it was the first time. This they forgot who, 
declaring the slave trade piracy, still legalized the enslave- 
ment of those already enslaved. This they forget who, 
admitting the equality of natural rights to the soil, declare 
it would be unjust now to assert them. For, as the keeping 
of a man in slavery is as much a violation of natural right 
as the seizure of his remote ancestor, so is the robbery 
involved in the present denial of natural rights to the soil 
as much a robbery as was the first act of fraud or force 
which violated those rights. Those who say it would be 
unjust for the people to resume their natural rights in the 
land without compensating present holders, confound right 
and wrong as flagrantly as did they who held it a crime in 
the slave to run away without first paying his owner his 
market value. They have never formed a clear idea of 
what property in land means. It means not merely a 
continuous exclusion of some people from the element 
which it is plainly the intent of Nature that all should 
enjoy, but it involves a continuous confiscation of labor 
and the results of labor. The Duke of Argyll has, we say, 
a large income drawn from land. But is this income really 
drawn from land? Were there no men on his land what 
income could the Duke get from it, save such as his own 
hands produced? Precisely as if drawn from slaves, this 
income represents an appropriation of the earnings of labor. 
The effect of permitting the Duke to treat this land as his 
property, is to make so many other Scotsmen, in whole or 
in part, his serfs — to compel them to labor for him without 
pay, or to enable him to take from them their earnings 
without return. Surely, if the Duke will look at the matter 
in this way, he must see that the iniquity is not in abolishing 
an institution which permits one man to plunder others, 



48 ECONOMICS OF HEBRERT SPENCER. 

but in continuing it. He must see that any claim of land- 
owners to compensation is not a claim to payment for what 
they have previously taken, but to payment for what they 
might yet take, precisely as would be the claim of the slave- 
holder — the true character of which appears in the fact that 
he would demand more compensation for a strong slave, 
out of whom he might yet get much work, than for a 
decrepit one, out of whom he had already forced nearly all 
the labor he could yield." 

AH this is very admirable, and all of it is a logical 
deduction from Mr. Spencer's argument that it is impossi- 
ble to justify private property in land. But it is also true 
that, if the object of all human endeavor is to increase the 
length and depth and breadth of life, we are certainly not 
justified in throwing an enormous class upon the tender 
mercies of a world where many of them would probably 
starve to death. For these people have been led to look 
upon land-owning as part and parcel of our social system, 
under which land is as legitimate an investment as any 
other ; many of them are perfectly unable to earn a living ; 
for none of them would a place be made, since the express 
declaration of both George and Spencer is that our present 
industrial system shall remain unchanged. The proposi- 
tion is, therefore, the despoiling of a special class ; and 
though that class unquestionably has done, and still is 
doing, incalculable mischief; and though the wrongs 
inflicted on the proletariat are so enormous as to iustify 
almost any retaliation, it is certain that class-robbery can 
never satisfy the demands of abstract justice. 

From the utilitarian point of view the position, as one 
of statesmanship, is infinitely worse. A special class thus 
singled out for sacrifice will fight to its dying gasp ; it will 
make enormous capital out of the injustice of which it is 
the victim ; it will rally immense forces to its standard, and 



COMPENSA TION. 49 

prolong the struggle indefinitely. That Mr. George should 
have thought that such a struggle could be started, pur- 
sued, and carried to a successful issue simply by the con- 
vincing eloquence of abstract propositions, unassisted by 
other concurrent economic changes, is anything but 
creditable to his intelligence. 

The Socialists have indulged in no such sanguine imag- 
inings. They look to a steady pressure all along the line 
resulting in modifications all along the line, in which land- 
lordism will come in for its full share of alteration. They 
look to the steady growth of the unemployed question in 
our industrial centers, bringing with it absolute compulsion 
of the municipal authorities "to do something." And 
this something cannot possibly be done without the author- 
ities themselves tampering with the vested rights of land- 
lordism. This has all been expressed so admirably by Mr. 
Bernard Shaw in the Fabian Essays that I cannot refrain 
from quoting him again. Speaking of the pressure upon 
the municipal authorities he says : ' ' But the municipal 
organization of the industry of these people will require 
capital. Where is the municipality to get it? Raising 
the rates is out of the question : the ordinary tradesmen 
and householders are already rated and rented to the limit 
of endurance : further burdens would almost bring them 
mto the street with a red flag. Dreadful dilemma ! in 
which the County Council, between the devil and the deep 
sea, will hear Lord Hobhouse singing a song of deliverance, 
telling a golden tale of ground values to be municipalized 
by taxation. The land nationalizers will swell the chorus : 
the Radical progressive income taxers singing together, 
and the ratepaying tenants shouting for joy. The capital 
difiiculty thus solved — for we need not seriously anticipate 
that the landlords will actually fight, as our President once 
threatened — the question of acquiring land will arise. The 



50 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



nationalizers will declare for its annexation by the munici- 
pality without compensation ; but that will be rejected as 
spoliation, worthy only of revolutionary Socialists. The 
no-compensation cry is indeed a piece of unpractical catas- 
trophic insurrectionism ; for while compensation would be 
unnecessary and absurd if every proprietor were expro- 
priated simultaneously, and the proprietary system at once 
replaced by full blown Socialism, yet when it is necessary 
to proceed by degrees, the denial of compensation would 
have the effect of singling out individual proprietors for 
expropriation while the others remained unmolested, and 
depriving them of their private means long before there 
was suitable municipal employment ready for them. The 
land, as it is required, will, therefore, be honestly purchased ; 
and the purchase money, or the interest thereon, will be 
procured, like the capital, by taxing rent. Of course this 
will be at bottom an act of expropriation just as much as 
the collection of Income Tax to-day is an act of expropri- 
ation. As such, it will be denounced by the landlords as 
merely a committing of the newest sin the oldest kind of 
way. In effect, they will be compelled at each purchase 
to buy out one of their body and present his land to the 
municipality, thereby distributing the loss fairly over their 
whole class, instead of placing it on one man who is no 
more responsible than the rest. But they will be compelled 
to do this in a manner that will satisfy the moral sense of 
the ordinary citizen as effectively as that of the skilled 
economist." 

It is submitted that the above constitutes a more sensi- 
ble method of procedure than the single-tax scheme which, 
commencing with vehement protests that the landlords 
should not have a cent, has ended as the professed tail of 
a semi-professedly free-trade party that is always careful to 
disown the connection. 



GRO WTH. 



51 



CHAPTER V. 
GROWTH. 

THE discussion of Mr. Spencer's original advocacy of 
land-nationalization has carried me further into the 
field of general economics than I had originally in- 
tended. I do not regret it, since one of the main objects 
of this argument has been to show that the inauguration of 
any such scheme would not, of itself, permanently alter 
existing social conditions. That these social conditions 
will have to be radically altered, and that at a very early 
date, all thinkers are practically agreed, the almost solitary 
exception being Mr. Spencer, who clings tenaciously to 
the laissez faire doctrines he formulated in 1842, minus the 
land-nationalization proposition. For his continued silence 
upon that most vital point, coupled with the fact that when 
he has occasionally broken silence it has been only to urge 
the land-owner's claim to compensation, is tantamount to a 
virtual withdrawal of the proposition. I have also incident- 
ally endeavored to explain my reasons for believing that 
such a measure as the one proposed will never be inaugu- 
rated by a society still saturated with the selfishness of 
laissez faire philosophy ; since that philosophy isolates men, 
robs them of public spirit, and, therefore, renders it impossi- 
ble for them to form the powerful combination necessary 
for the overthrow of such an institution as private property 
in land. It has been no spirit of petty pique that has 
caused the labor movement in general, and the Socialists 



52 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

in particular, to turn the cold shoulder upon or to oppose 
bitterly Mr. Henry George. It has been a deep-lying 
conviction of the fact that it is only the closest solidarity 
that can remove the mountain of folly, cruelty and fraud 
which centuries have bequeathed to us. The heritage we 
take is our existing social system, wherein is crystallized 
much doubtless that sages and philosophers have dreamed 
and prayed for, but much — alas ! much more — that is the 
legitimate offspring of the cruel greed of the few, and of 
the yet more lamentable cowardice and indolence of the 
many. That tender aspirations, burning hopes and high 
resolves are now waking into life on every hand is unques- 
tionably true ; but the shell has to be burst, and the effort 
required will probably be far greater than any that the 
human race has yet been called upon to make. It is mad- 
ness, pure and unalloyed, to imagine that the masses will 
find the spur necessary to that effort in a philosophy con- 
cerning which an eminent Christian Socialist — Charles 
Kingsley — has said : "Of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical 
and atheistic schemes of the Universe the Cobden and 
Bright one is exactly the worst." 

I have also endeavored to explain the reasons for my 
belief that the maintenance of a communistic system of 
land tenure, side by side with the retention of our present 
individualistic methods of production and exchange, would 
be an impossibility. Oil and water do not mix : the work- 
ings of the system would be vitiated from the start. 

There is, however, another side to the shield. Messrs. 
Spencer and George may prate of individualism as they 
will ; they may champion the ' ' buy cheap and sell dear ' ' 
philosophy of Bright and Cobden to their hearts' content, 
and the net result of all their teaching will be to increase 
the growing conviction that the management of our vast 



GROWTH. 53 



landed estate is an affair in which we are all equally 
interested, and in which, therefore, we are all entitled to 
bear an equal hand. Similarly with the proposition that 
land tenures should be limited to such territory as the 
occupier can actually use — a proposition that finds ready 
favor with the extreme individualists of whom Mr. Hugh 
O. Pentecost is a type. For this too is Individualism with 
a string tied round its leg ; this too is a confession that the 
Individualism that displays itself in "grab" has got to 
stop, that pig-philosophy has been tried and found miser- 
ably wanting. It is an invitation to the public to wake up 
and look after its estate ; it urges it to be the perpetual 
judge that shall discriminate daily and hourly as to where 
use shades off into abuse, as to where the possessor is 
legitimately employed and where he is acting as a soulless 
monopolist. It constitutes, therefore, an immense departure 
from the philosophy that for ages bade the conqueror 
annex the earth if his sword were only strong enough, and 
that to-day bids him corner the globe if his purse be only 
long enough. It marks an immense advance toward Social- 
ism ; and the differences of detail between different schemes 
are but the natural outcome of the excessive speculation 
which always precedes vigorous and wide-spread action. 

That this conclusion is correct the facts in the case 
already amply prove. Side by side with the growing 
sense that there are many functions which the community 
cannot trust to private hands, but must perform itself, there 
grows the habit of regarding the land as something in 
which we are all concerned, that we should all profit by. 
The point I emphasize, however, is that this habit is grow- 
ing side by side with the growth of the Socialist conception 
of business conducted by organized society. Thus, on the 
one hand, the main contentions of Messrs. Spencer and 



54 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



George respecting the right to land are even now within 
the domain of practical politics, and they have been dragged 
there by the growth of the very philosophy which Messrs, 
George and Spencer have made it their special business to 
combat. The whole process is categorically set out by Mr. 
Sidney Webb in his Socialism in England^'^ and from the 
same author, writing in the Fabian Essays, I take the 
following quotation : ' ' The National Liberal Federation 
adopts the special taxation of urban ground values as the 
main feature in its domestic program, notwithstanding that 
this proposal is characterized by old-fashioned Liberals as 
sheer confiscation of so much of the landlords' property. 
The London Liberal and Radical Union, which has Mr. 
John Morley for its president, even proposes that the 
County Council shall have power to rebuild the London 
slums at the sole charge of the ground landlord. It is, 
therefore, not surprising that the Trades Union Congress 
should now twice have declared in favor of ' Land Nation- 
alization' by large majorities, or that the bulk of the 
London County Council should be returned on an essen- 
tially Sociahst platform." In the same Essay is printed 
the Radical program, as given in the Star of 8th August, 
1888; and, under the head of "Extension of Municipal 
Activity," I find the following: ''Object. — The gradual 
public organization of labor for all public purposes, and 
the elimination of the private capitalist and middleman. 
Means. — i. The provision of increased facilities for the 
acquisition of land, the destruction, without compensation, 
of all dwellings found unfit for habitation, and the provision 
of artisan dwellings by the municipality." The "destruc- 
tion without compensation" is exceedingly significant. It 

* Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. iv. 
No. 2. (1889.) Price 75c. 



GROWTH. 



55 



marks a complete abandonment of the idea that what is the 
landlord's is his own, to do with as he chooses. It occupies 
the same place in the history of landlordism as the modifi- 
cation of absolute into constitutional monarchy does in the 
history of royalty. 

It thus appears that the general sense of the community 
and the stern logic of events alike prove the truth of my 
previous position, viz. : that communism in land, and indi- 
vidual competition in all other departments, are incompati- 
ble ; that the socializing of tl>e land will be brought about 
by the socialistic tendencies of the age, as evidenced in all 
departments. 

In schemes, as such, Socialism has no great interest. 
True to the evolutionary thought which Marx was, perhaps, 
the first to carry boldly into the domain of economics, it 
relies on growth. It sees that every industrial change 
gives rise to the necessity for another change ; that the 
necessity is seen, is discussed and is finally adopted, with 
more or less friction according as the parties on either side 
are enlightened or unenlightened. But always, sooner or 
later, the industrial change forces other changes all along 
the line ; creeds, customs, laws — themselves the creatures 
of previous economic conditions — modifying themselves 
under the imperious pressure. And, as it requires no 
supernatural sagacity to foresee that from the union of a 
stallion and a mare there will be born a foal ; so it requires 
no great sagacity to foresee that, if the industrial change 
has been a disintegrating one, there will also be a series of 
correspondingly disintegrating changes in industry and 
religion, art and laws, philosophy, social customs, marriage 
relations, and all the countless manifestations of life. 

Standing on this pinnacle — raised for us slowly, stone 
upon stone, by the labors of a thousand Darwins, Herbert 



56 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

Spencers, Huxleys, all building far better than the most far- 
sighted of them can possibly have known — we look down 
upon the kingdoms of the earth, and we see how they have 
been made. Thanks to the labors of such investigators 
as Morgan, Bachofen, Frederick Engels, and the innumer- 
able host whose busy fingers have been devoted to the 
disentanglement of the earliest history of our race, the 
gorgeous diorama of industrial advance revolves before us, 
and we discover, even where we had least suspected it — in 
the most intimate of social relationships, in questions of 
marriage, descent, inheritance and the like — alterations, 
re-alterations and revolutions following in the wake of 
changed industrial conditions.* Under the guidance of M. 
Taine we pass in review the centuries that followed the fall 
of Rome, and see the feudal system, with its supplement 
the CathoHc church, gradually pressed and hammered into 
its historic shape by the altered circumstances of the times. 
Noting the exigencies of the epoch, we realize that institu- 
tions, which to us of to-day seen meaningless and immoral, 
came into existence by an entirely natural process, and rose 
to power because they ministered efficiently to what had 
become a practically universal want. We advance slowly 
to a comprehension that liberty is only one of the laws of 
life ; that storm and stress beget conditions under which 
men are willing to sacrifice a part of life that the remainder 
may be saved ; and that, when the whole social organism 
is falHng to pieces, the clumsiest bandage of the most nar- 
row-minded and unscientific organization is eagerly wel- 

* See, in particular, Frederick En,8:e]s's Oris^in of the Family, 
Private Property and the State : Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society, 
and Bachofen's Mother-riffht. The conclusions of these and others 
investigators are admirably summed up by August Bebel in his 
Woman and Socialism's, translation of which will shortly be issued by 
the Humboldt Publishing Company. 



GROWTH. 



57 



corned. Similarly we begin already to grasp the significance 
of the startling changes wrought by the series of great 
discoveries, of which that of America, four hundred years 
ago, was the first. The shutters were suddenly thrown 
open, and the eye found itself confronted with the infinite 
landscape of the world. Who to-day can measure the 
throb that must have come into the human heart ; the beat 
of new hopes ; the chafing at the restraints of bandages 
originally designed for an incomparably smaller life ? Every 
enterprising spirit felt the breath of a fresh morning blow- 
ing in his nostrils, and the world seemed big enough for 
every one to make for himself a living. The story develops 
itself, chapter by chapter, with logical precision. New 
markets send buccaneers chasing round the globe with 
Drake and Frobisher ; gold tempts the Spaniards to the 
conversion of the New World, cross and sword in hand. 
The pendulum swings violently to the opposite extreme. 
Everywhere an intense individualism is engendered, and 
manifests itself in symptoms that, at first sight, appear to 
have nothing in common. For from this are alike descended 
the merry-hearted citizen of the Renaissance, and the 
gloomy Puritan who, in Europe, burst the bonds of Rome 
that he might roast Servetus at the stake, and, in America, 
threw off the yoke of Church and King that he might teach 
heretical witches how to behave themselves. To this alike 
belong the Parisian bourgeois who used the sans-cidottes to 
pull down the feudal nobility with the Bastille, and the 
Massachusetts manufacturer, who transplants his capital to 
Carolina to escape from the tyramiy of factory acts that 
limit the extortions he may practice on his "hands." 

Again a new order is arising, springing, as is ever the 
case, from the loins of a new industrial revolution. And 
in this case the revolution is, beyond all measure, the most 



58 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

extraordinary yet accomplished. Strong as is now the 
instinct of individuaUsm, the need of another prime neces- 
sary of hfe — cooperation — is making itself keenly felt, and 
heart and head alike revolt against the ' ' cash-nexus ' ' as 
the only bond between man and man. All signs presage the 
coming of a tremendous change. How could it be other- 
wise? How is it possible to link nationahties together 
with bands of steel, and at the same time to keep intact 
the old national antipathies? How is it possible to set 
the most extensive explorations afoot, and, by digging up 
the roots of all religious systems, to show the material 
soil from which every one of them has sprung ; how is it 
possible to do this and at the same time to keep intact the 
old myth of a special code of morality dictated from on high, 
immutable, unchangeable? How is it possible to imagine 
that the matrimonial order will continue for all time 
unchanged, when proof is piled on proof that it has varied 
from age to age with every variation in the industrial 
environment? How is it possible to believe in the wage- 
system as the final expression of industrial development, 
when it is shown to be but one of numerous arrangements 
under which the processes of production and exchange 
have been from time to time conducted? Moreover, how 
is it possible for even the most sanguine of our plutocrats 
to hug this cherished delusion to his breast, when he con- 
siders that the wage-system practically dates from the over- 
throw of feudalism less than a hundred years ago, and is 
already working with a friction that threatens to tear to 
pieces the whole machine? To ask these questions is to 
answer them. 

The foregoing reflection develops yet another thought 
which, as it seems to me, is not expressed so often or so 



GROWTH. 



59 



clearly as it should be. We are all Individualists and we 
are all Collectivists at heart : we are all Anarchists and 
we are all Socialists : we all long for and enjoy the com- 
munism of society, the comniunio7i of man with man, and 
the same law of life compels us all, in self-defence, to 
demand liberty for our own individualities. With some 
the pendulum swings to one extreme, with others to the 
other, varying with the ante-natal and the actually existing 
environment. But the difference is not of kind, it is only 
of degree. Now the same processes are at work in the 
general mind of society as those we see operating in the 
particular mind of the individual ; and, just as we see the 
particular mind always, upon some one occasion or another, 
anxious for the abolition of some law, custom, or other set 
of circumstances that appear to hinder the realization of 
the ideal that it has constructed, so do we find it with the 
general mind. Moreover, just as we find that the influences 
at work to-day incline the particular mind to the destructive 
side, while those at work to-morrow will incline it to the 
constructive side, so is it with the general mind of society. 
Two further questions consequently present themselves ; 
one a question of actual ascertainment, the other a question 
of probable calculation. The first is as to the order of the 
mental processes, and this I conceive to be as follows. 
Dissatisfied with existing conditions the mind constructs 
— an ideal. Having constructed, it seeks to demolish what 
stands in the way of realizing that ideal, and this starts it 
out on a long career of criticism, since it has to unearth 
the obstacles. Having discovered the obstacles and 
removed them, it becomes again constructive and devotes 
itself to devices for the preservation of the life of the ideal 
it now has realized. It enters again upon the law and 
custom making stage. When it is in the second stage it 



6o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

is Anarchistic, wishing to overthrow the hostile law. In 
the first and third stages it is constructive, and is Utopian- 
Socialist or Scientific-Socialist, according as it is igno- 
rant and believes that it can construct camels out of its 
own inner consciousness, or enlightened and recognizes 
that a camel must be grown by the development of natural 
laws exhibiting themselves in well-defined tendencies. 

The second question, which is necessarily one of calcu- 
lation, is as to what stage of the general mental process we 
are at present in. Granted that the destructive and con- 
structive processes go on largely side by side, it is still 
certain that at one time more effort is spent upon the one 
than upon the other. The thing that appeals to the general 
sense as the thing that has to be done here and now is that 
on which the mind principally fixes its attention, and nat- 
urally so, for the human mind is essentially a reasonable 
creature. Now, according to my own calculation, we are 
still principally in the critical or destructive stage ; and the 
calculation is based upon the following observations. 

First : we are not as yet a jovial people, as we should 
be if we saw our way clearly through the wilderness and 
had the promised land already well in view. In other 
words, we see plainly that there are still numerous obstacles 
to be unearthed ; that many lions still block the path, most 
of which indeed wear sheep's clothing, and have to be 
exposed, condemned, and executed, before the journey can 
be successfully completed. 

Secondly : I have noticed that, although treatises upon 
social re-construction find favor with a few, it is only with 
a few ; whereas denunciation finds ready listeners in every 
circle. And this is by no means because the human mind 
is naturally destructive, for I believe the history of the 
race will show that it is upon the whole exceedingly con- 



GROWTH. 6 1 



structive ; that it cherishes its pet institutions long after 
they have become cold clay ; and the ' ' glorious army of 
martyrs" are all witnesses to the danger that for centuries 
attended all attempts to wrench the social mind from its 
conservative and constructive mood, and plunge it into the 
destructive process. It is not so to-day. There is scarcely 
an existing institution that a man may not now denounce 
as scathingly as he will, and the penalty is, at most, his 
ostracism by a particular set upon which he can often 
contemptuously turn his back. That this does not hold 
true in such countries as Germany and Russia in no way 
affects the soundness of the argument. I speak of public 
sentiment, not as it expresses itself, but as it would fain 
express itself 

In the third place I have noticed that all the numerous 
parties that have been formed upon a hasty and incomplete 
analysis of existing conditions have quickly gone to pieces, 
no matter how brave the front with which they may have 
started. The want of tenacity on the part of their own 
original adherents I take as evidence that they themselves 
are guiltily self-conscious that their own analysis has not 
been so complete as to assure them that they stand upon 
impregnable ground. The want of favor with which the 
public receives their platforms I take as evidence, not that 
their proposals do not strike the public at first blush as 
desirable, but that the pubHc is very guiltily self-conscious 
that, for its part, it has practically made no analysis at all, 
and is altogether uncertain whither the proposed reforms 
will lead it. 

I have, therefore, for myself concluded that we are still, 
and shall be for some time to come, principally in the crit- 
ical and destructive stage. The people are at present 
employed in observing the deficiencies of the existing order ; 



62 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

in taking stock of the classes, the institutions and the erro- 
neous beliefs that have proved to be a nuisance, and that, 
therefore, must be overthrown. At every step in the inves- 
tigation the magnitude of the task becomes more apparent, 
and therewith the necessity of a solidarity that shall be 
equal to the task. All which begets a longing for union — 
to which the economic developments of the age give the 
greatest possible impetus, by crowding the workers cheek 
by jowl in our huge industrial centers, and massing a thou- 
sand artisans under a single roof Furthermore, the more 
searching the analysis, the more clearly is seen the lament- 
able fact that human nature is still most miserably weak, 
and that there is a small, but immensely influential class 
which will not listen to the voice of reason, being ruled 
entirely by its interests. We act and re-act on one another, 
and lessons that the masters teach are sooner or later bet- 
tered by the pupils. The pressure, therefore, tends all the 
time to weld the workers into the solidarity of a special 
class, with special class interests, which they will inevitably 
seek to realize by the special methods of their class. These 
methods will be shaped by the habits of their daily Hfe, 
which, in their turn, are shaped by their economic condi- 
tions. It is true that their methods may be influenced to 
some extent by outside counsels, but only to some extent ; 
for, when weighed against sentiment and the force of daily 
habit, the logic of fine-spun argument is extremely light : 
all this I neither approve nor disapprove, contenting my- 
self with a simple statement of the facts. I point out, 
however, that the tendency to solidarity must, by the inev- 
itable force of circumstances, grow continually more pro- 
nounced ; and that equally pronounced will be the tendency 
to condemn all there may be in Individualism and laissez 
/aire that threatens to disintegrate such solidarity. I 



GRO WTH. 63 



furthermore point out that the workers are the people, and 
that they are continually receiving new and invaluable 
recruits from the classes that have hitherto stood between 
them and the plutocracy. 

All this has been a seemingly long digression, but it 
was a necessary one. For the point I wish to drive home 
is, that it is not the stupidity of the masses which is answer- 
able for the decay of Herbert Spencer's influence as an 
apostle of laissez /aire. The reason for that decay is that 
laissez /aire is opposed to the spirit of the times, which, 
being itself forged in the furnace of the economic conditions 
of the times, is inexorable. 

I present, however, again another aspect of the question, 
for which the previous argument has already laid the 
ground. If my analysis be correct ; if we are still mainly 
in the critical stage ; those who differ widely in their con- 
structive schemes can materially assist one another in the 
critical department. In this we Socialists join hands with 
Herbert Spencer, and we gladly acknowledge that we are 
much indebted to his criticism for our own advance from 
the Utopian stage of fancy schemes to the solid and scien- 
tific stage of "growth." All which I shall endeavor to 
point out in the next division of this work. 



PART II. 

CHAPTER I. 
CONDUCT. 

I NOW turn to the department in which Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, quitting the uncertain task of constructing 
special schemes, has done invaluable service to the 
cause of truth, and therein, as I conceive, to that of Social- 
ism. For, in the words with which Herr August Bebel, 
the leader of the German Socialists, closes the preface to 
the last edition of Wo?na7i and Socialism : "If Socialism 
rests on error it will go under ; but if it rests on truth — 
that is to say, if it is the natural outcome of our social 
evolution — then no power on earth can prevent its being 
realized. Somehow it will break its own way to the front, 
and become the new order of society." That this is the 
view which all intelligent Socialists now take of their own 
movement is due to the fidelity with which they have 
followed the researches of Comte, of Darwin, and of the 
whole school of evolutionists, among whose chief inter- 
preters is Mr. Herbert Spencer. I now enter upon a 
consideration of the laws of conduct, and, therefore, of life 
in general as summed up by Mr. Spencer more particularly 
in his Data of Ethics ; though I shall also have occasion to 
refer from time to time to other of his writings. And this 



66 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. 

comes strictly within the limits of my subject — The Eco- 
nomics of Herbert Spencer; for economics are not bounded 
by the processes of production and exchange, powerful 
though the influence of these may be. The oikou nomas — 
the law of the household — is necessarily the law of and for 
the lives of the members of the household. It is, therefore, 
the law of life, and this takes all Nature, whose law is unity, 
for its scope. 

Mr. Spencer, in defining the subject matter of Ethics, 
has given us a general outline of the development of life 
as conceived by evolutionists. The union and mutual 
interdependence by which life is preserved and continued 
even in its least developed stage : the increasing interde- 
pendence as we mount in the scale of life, an interdepend- 
ence by no means limited to the "cash-nexus" which 
commercialism would recognize as the only bond : the 
necessity of peace, or, as Socialists would put it, the 
necessity for substituting harmonious cooperation for the 
now prevalent internecine warfare of competition — all these 
will be found expressly, or impliedly, set out in what 
follows. In part I have condensed Mr. Spencer's expo- 
sition ; the more important passages I have given entire ; 
throughout I have conscientiously endeavored to give a 
correct representation of Mr. Spencer's doctrine. 

In his Data of Ethics Mr. Spencer examines conduct 
as a whole, comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends 
as exhibited by all living creatures. "Nor is even this 
whole conceived with the needful fullness, so long as we 
think only of the conduct at present displayed around us. 
We have to include in our conception the less-developed 
conduct out of which this has arisen in course of time. 
We have to regard the conduct now shown us by creatures 



CONDUCT. 67 

of all orders as an outcome of the conduct which has 
brought life of every kind to its present height. And this 
is tantamount to saying that our preparatory step must be 
to study the evolution of conduct." 

"Conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions 
by excluding purposeless actions ; but during evolution 
this distinction arises by degrees." As we mount in the 
scale of life the adjustments become more purposeful, and 
"with the greater elaboration of life produced by the 
pursuit of more numerous ends, there goes that increased 
duration of life which constitutes the supreme end. And 
here is suggested the need for supplementing this concep- 
tion of evolving conduct. For besides being an improving 
adjustment of acts to ends, such as furthers prolongation 
of life, it is such as furthers increased amount of life. 
The sum of vital activities during any given interval is far 
less in the oyster than in the cuttlefish. . . The differ- 
ence between the average lengths of the lives of savage and 
civilized is no true measure of the difference between the 
totalities of their two lives, considered as aggregates of 
thought, feeling and action." 

The examples given up to this point are merely those 
of acts directed purposely to the preservation and comple- 
tion of the individual life. We have now to consider those 
adjustments which have for their aim the preservation of 
the species. "Self-preservation in each generation has all 
along depended on the preservation of offspring by preced- 
ing generations. And in proportion as evolution of the 
conduct subserving individual life is high, implying high 
organization, there must previously have been a highly 
evolved conduct subserving nurture of the young. Through- 
out the ascending grades of the animal kingdom, this 
second kind of conduct presents stages of advance like 



68 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

those which we have observed in the first. Low down, 
where structures and functions are Httle developed, and the 
power of adjusting acts to ends but sUght, there is no con- 
duct, properly so named, furthering salvation of the species. 
Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, 
arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct : 
adjusted actions are preceded by unadjusted ones." The 
conduct which furthers race- maintenance evolves hand in 
hand with the conduct which furthers self-maintenance, the 
two being mutually dependent. "Speaking generally, 
neither can evolve without evolution of the other, and the 
highest evolutions of the two must be reached simultane- 
ously. ' ' 

Neither of these kinds of conduct, however, can assume 
its highest form without that highest form being itself 
assumed by yet a third kind of conduct. "The multitu- 
dinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth cannot live 
wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in 
presence of one another — are interfered with by one 
another. In large measure the adjustments of acts to ends 
which we have been considering are components of that 
'struggle for existence' carried on both between members 
of the same species and between members of different 
species ; and, very generally, a successful adjustment made 
by one creature involves an unsuccessful adjustment made 
by another creature, either of the same kind or of a differ- 
ent kind. That the carnivore may live herbivores must 
die ; and that its young may be reared the young of weaker 
creatures must be orphaned. Maintenance of the hawk 
and its brood involves the deaths of many small birds ; and 
that small birds may multiply, their progeny must be fed 
with innumerable sacrificed worms and larvae. Competition 
among members of the same species has allied, though less 



CONDUCT. 69 



conspicuous, results. The stronger often carries off by 
force the prey which the weaker has caught. MonopoHzing 
certain hunting grounds, the more ferocious drive others 
of their kind into less favorable places. With plant-eating 
animals, too, the like holds : the better food is secured by 
the more vigorous individuals, while the less vigorous and 
worse fed succumb either directly from innutrition or indi- 
directly from resulting inability to escape enemies. That 
is to say, among creatures whose lives are carried on antag- 
onistically, each of the two kinds of conduct delineated 
above must remain imperfectly evolved. Even in such 
few kinds of them as have little to fear from enemies or 
competitors, as lions or tigers, there is still inevitable failure 
in the adjustments of acts to ends toward the close of life. 
Death by starvation from inability to catch prey shows a 
falling short of conduct from its ideal. . . 

"This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces us by 
antithesis to conduct that is perfectly evolved. Contem- 
plating these adjustments of acts to ends which miss com- 
pleteness because they cannot be made by one creature 
without other creatures being prevented from making them, 
raises the thought of adjustments such that each creature 
may make them without preventing them from being made 
by other creatures. That the highest form of conduct must 
be so distinguished is an inevitable implication ; for while 
the form of conduct is such that adjustments of acts to ends 
by some necessitate non-adjustments by others, there 
remains room for modifications which bring conduct into 
a form avoiding this, and so making the totality of life 
greater. 

"From the abstract let us pass to the concrete. Rec- 
ognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, 
let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three 



70 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while 
the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of savages, 
the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest 
form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried 
on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short ; the foster- 
ing of offspring often fails, and is incomplete when it does 
not fail ; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance and 
race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of 
other beings, of different kind or of like kind. In social 
groups formed by compounding and recompounding prim- 
itive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in pro- 
portion as there continue antagonisms between the groups 
and antagonisms between members of the same group — 
two traits necessarily associated, since the nature which 
prompts international aggression prompts aggression of 
individuals on one another. Hence the limit of evolution 
can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful 
societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends, in main- 
taining individual life and rearing new individuals, which is 
effected by each without hindering others from effecting 
like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to 
constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only 
as war decreases and dies out. 

"A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There 
remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond 
so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing 
others from achieving their ends, the members of a society 
may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And 
if, either indirectly by industrial cooperation, or directly 
by volunteered aid, fellow- citizens can make easier for one 
another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct 
assumes a still higher phase of evolution, since whatever 
facilitates the making of adjustments by each increases the 



CONDUCT. 



71 



totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the 
lives of all more complete. 

"The conduct with which morality is not concerned 
passes into conduct which is moral or immoral by small 
degrees and countless ways ;" as a part of conduct at large 
it cannot be understood without a previous understanding 
of conduct at large, which in its turn can only be understood 
by having a previous understanding of the evolution of 
conduct. 

"Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which 
universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its 
evolution. We have also concluded that these last stages 
in the evolution of conduct are those displayed by the 
highest type of being, when he is forced, by increase of 
numbers, to live more and more in presence of his fellows. 
And there has followed the corollary that conduct gains 
ethical sanction in proportion as the activities, becoming 
less and less militant and more and more industrial, are 
such as do not necessitate mutual injury or hinderance, but 
consist with, and are furthered by, cooperation and mutual 
aid. 

"These implications of the evolution hypothesis we 
shall now see harmonize with the leading moral ideas men 
have otherwise reached." 

In the first chapter of this book I have alluded to Mr. 
Spencer's position as a utilitarian. Although the matter 
will develop of itself, I may here point out that the specific 
aim of the Data of Ethics is to substitute for the empirical 
utilitarianism of uninstructed thought, a scientific utilita- 
rianism founded on the rock of ascertained facts. I may 
again remind my readers that Socialism long since passed 
from the static to the dynamic stage ; from the advocacy 



72 



ECONOMICS OF HEBRERT SPENCER. 



of a rigid, fixed Utopia to a recognition of the laws of 
growth. This it never could have done had its advocates 
continued fettered to the various stationary Utopias which 
all religions have insisted on, setting a specified goal, and 
marking, with mathematical precision, the road by which 
alone it can be approached. In the place of these phan- 
tasy-pictures evolved from the inner consciousness of minds 
often morbid as the effect of an unnatural life, we now have 
a definite study of the actual workings of life as they reveal 
themselves to the eye of patient research. We have studies 
instead of dreams. We have conclusions based on facts ; 
and, although the facts may at first be scanty and the con- 
clusions, therefore, more or less uncertain, we have the 
security that, with every additional fact accumulated, the 
conclusions will be re-revised, and that they will become 
more and more reliable, affording constantly a more solid 
footing. In this all evolutionists are at one. All insist 
that actual facts should be examined through the micro- 
scope that science has put into our hands ; all insist that 
the effort should be to bring life into harmony with the 
facts so ascertained, instead of vainly attempting to make 
it square with the alleged divinations of an ignorant past. 
The hights to which such a philosophy, even in this its 
earliest stage, ascends, we shall have ample opportunity of 
seeing in passages hereafter quoted. I think it advisable, 
however, at this point to introduce an extract from Mr. 
Spencer's Progress. That various ingenious critics, who 
pride themselves on having taken all knowledge for their 
province, have quarreled with this passage I am well aware. 
My object in introducing it is both to show that materiahsm 
is not necessarily a low and sordid creed, and to point out 
the sphere which Socialism has taken for its operations, 
leaving to individuals and to posterity the grasping of the 



CONDUCT. 



73 



infinite if it ever can be grasped. The passage is as 
follows : 

' ' A few words must be added on the ontological bear- 
ings of our argument. Probably not a few will conclude 
that here is an attempted solution of the great questions 
with which philosophy in all ages has perplexed itself 
Let none thus deceive themselves. Only such as know 
not the scope and the limits of science can fall into so grave 
an error. The foregoing generalizations apply, not to the 
genesis of things in themselves but to their genesis as mani- 
fested to the human consciousnesg. After all that has been 
said, the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The 
explanation of that which is explicable does but bring out 
into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which 
remains behind. However we may succeed in reducing 
the equation to its lowest terms, we are not thereby enabled 
to determine the unknown quantity : on the contrary, it 
only becomes more manifest that the unknown quantity 
can never be found. 

' ' Little as it seems to do so, fearless inquiry tends con- 
tinually to give a firmer basis to all true religion. The 
timid sectarian, alarmed at the progress of knowledge, 
obliged to abandon one by one the superstitions of his 
ancestors, and daily finding his cherished beliefs more and 
more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day 
be explained, and has a corresponding dread of science ; 
thus evincing the profoundest of all infidelity — the fear lest 
the truth be bad. On the other hand, the sincere man of 
science, content to follow wherever the evidence leads him, 
becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly convinced 
that the universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the 
external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the 
midst of perpetual changes, of which he can discover neither 



74 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



the beginning nor the end. If, tracing back the evolution 
of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that 
all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds it utterly- 
impossible to conceive how this came to be so ; and equally, 
if he speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the 
grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding themselves 
before him. On the other hand, if he looks inward, he 
perceives that both terminations of the thread of conscious- 
ness are beyond his grasp : he cannot remember when or 
how consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine 
the consciousness that at any moment exists ; for only a 
state of consciousness that is already past can become the 
object of thought, and never one which is passing. 

"When, again, he turns from the succession of phenom- 
ena, external or internal, to their essential nature, he is 
equally at fault. Though he may succeed in resolving all 
properties of objects into manifestations of force, he is not 
thereby enabled to realize what force is ; but finds, on the 
contrary, that the more he thinks about it the more he is 
baffled. Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may 
finally bring him down to sensations as the original mate- 
rials out of which all thought is woven, he is none the for- 
warder ; for he cannot in the least comprehend sensation — 
cannot even conceive how sensation is possible. Inward 
and outward things he thus discovers to be alike inscru- 
table in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that 
the materialist and spiritualist controversy is a mere war 
of words ; the disputants being equally absurd — each 
believing he understands that which it is impossible for 
any man to understand. In all directions his investiga- 
tions eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable ; 
and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. 
He learns at once the greatness and the littleness of human 



CONDUCT. 



75 



intellect — its power in dealing with all that comes within 
the range of experience ; its impotence in dealing with all 
that transcends experience. He feels, with a vividness 
which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness of the 
simplest fact, considered in itself He alone truly sees that 
absolute knowledge is impossible. He alone knows that 
under all things there lies an impenetrable mystery." 

I may add here that, if any are still in doubt as to the 
gulf that separates the philosophy of evolution, with 
"growth" and ceaseless change as its fundamental law, 
from the philosophy of existing religions with their fixed 
Utopias, they cannot do better than consider the attitude 
of the Roman Catholic church toward Socialism and the 
recent encyclical of the Pope upon the subject. They will 
be gratified with the edifying spectacle of an entire philos- 
ophy basing itself upon the placid assumption that the 
rights of property as they to-day exist are natural rights 
dictated direct from heaven, and that, as they have existed 
from all time, so must they continue for all time. The 
misfortune under which such a cause labors is the trifling 
one of depending exclusively on the ignorance of its sup- 
porters ; and it is to be feared that, sooner or later, they 
will awake to the fact that in every library and museum 
proof incontrovertible is to be found that the direct con- 
trary is the case. Thus, to take but a single instance, 
Bebel, in his Woman and Socialism, traces the various 
relationships between the sexes as they have developed 
and altered from age to age in consonance with changed 
industrial conditions. Concluding his review of the long 
and highly progressive period during which mother-right 
prevailed — descent being traced through the female, and 
woman having a preponderating influence in both domestic 



76 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

and public affairs — he says : ' ' Under the mother-right 
communism prevailed. With the triumph of the father- 
right the dominion of private property commences, and 
with the triumph of the father-right comes the oppression 
and servitude of woman." The ladies have been hitherto 
in blissful ignorance of this, their early history. We are, 
however, rapidly changing all this, and they are learning 
from their own sister-scholars that these are facts, written 
on papyrus, chiseled on stone, and absolutely irrefutable. 



UTILITARIANISM. 



11 



CHAPTER II. 
UTILITARIANISM. 

WE now enter upon a definite and prolonged exam- 
ination of the basis of Utilitarianism. What makes 
conduct good or bad, as the case may be? We 
call articles good or bad according as they are well or ill 
adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good knife is 
one which will cut, the bad umbrella one which fails to 
keep off the rain. And so throughout. Wherever the 
adjustment of the act to the required end is efficient we call 
it "good," where it is inefficient, "bad." In considering 
the judgment we pass upon men's actions, take first the 
primary set of adjustments — those subserving individual 
life. 

"Apart from approval or disapproval of his ulterior 
aims a man who fights is said to make a good defense if 
his defense is well adapted for self-preservation. . . And 
thus it is with the opinions from hour to hour on those acts 
of people around which bear on their health and personal 
welfare. ' You should not have done that ' is the reproof 
given to one who crosses the street amid a dangerous rush 
of vehicles. ' You ought to have changed your clothes ' is 
said to another who has taken cold after getting wet. ' You 
were right to take a receipt, ' ' you were wrong to invest 
without advice,' are common criticisms. All such approv- 
ing and disapproving utterances make the tacit assertion 
that, other things equal, conduct is right or wrong accord- 
ing as its special acts, well or ill adjusted to special ends, 
do or do not further the general end of self-preservation. 



78 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

"These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding 
acts are ordinarily little emphasized ; partly because the 
promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong 
enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because 
the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong 
and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence 
results a contrast. On turning to that second class of 
adjustments of acts to ends which subserve the rearing of 
offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application 
of the words good and bad to them, according as they are 
efficient or inefficient. The expressions good nursing and 
bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the 
quality and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to 
infantine wants from hour to hour, tacitly recognize as 
special ends which ought to be fulfilled the furthering of 
the vital functions, with a view to the general end of con- 
tinued life and growth. A mother is called good who, 
ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also 
adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental 
health ; and a bad father is one who either does not provide 
the necessaries of life for his family, or otherwise acts in a 
manner injurious to their bodies or minds. Similarly of 
the education given to them or provided for them. Good- 
ness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little consistency, 
however) according as its methods are so adapted to 
physical and psychical requirements as to further the 
children's lives for the time being, while preparing them 
for carrying on complete and prolonged adult life. 

"Most emphatic, however, are the applications of the 
words good and bad to conduct throughout that third 
division of it comprising the deeds by which men affect one 
another. In maintaining their own lives and fostering 
their offspring, men's adjustments of acts to ends are so 



UTILITARIANISM. 79 

apt to hinder the kindred adjustments of other men, that 
insistence on the needful Hmitations has to be perpetual ; 
and the mischiefs caused by men's interferences with one 
another's life-subserving actions are so great that the inter- 
dicts have to be peremptory. Hence the fact that the 
words good and bad have come to be specially associated 
with acts which further the complete living of others and 
acts which obstruct their complete living. Goodness stand- 
ing by itself, suggests, above all other things, the conduct 
of one who aids the sick in reacquiring normal vitality, 
assists the unfortunate to recover the means of maintaining 
themselves, defends those who are threatened with harm 
in person, property, or reputation, and aids whatever 
promises to improve the living of all his fellows. Contrari- 
wise, badness brings to mind, as its leading correlative, the 
conduct of one who, in carrying on his own life, damages 
the lives of others by injuring their bodies, destroying their 
possessions, defrauding them, calumniating them, 

"Always, then, acts are called good or bad according 
as they are well or ill adjusted to ends, and whatever 
inconsistency there is in our uses of the words arises from 
inconsistency of the ends. Here, however, the study of 
conduct in general, and of the evolution of conduct, have 
prepared us to harmonize those interpretations. The fore- 
going exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply 
the name good is the relatively more evolved conduct, and 
that bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively 
less evolved. We saw that evolution, tending ever toward 
self-preservation, reaches its limit when individual life is 
the greatest, both in length and breadth ; and now we see 
that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the con- 
duct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct 
tending to self-destruction. It was shown that along with 



8o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

increasing power of maintaining individual life which evolu- 
tion brings, there goes increasing power of perpetuating 
the species by fostering progeny, and that in this direction 
evolution reaches its limit when the needful number of 
young, preserved to maturity, are then fit for a life that is 
complete in fullness and duration ; and here it turns out 
that parental conduct is called good or bad as it approaches 
or falls short of this ideal result. Lastly, we inferred that 
establishment of an associated state both makes possible 
and requires a form of conduct such that life may be com- 
pleted in each and in his offspring, not only without pre- 
venting completion of it in others, but with furtherance 
of it in others ; and we have found above that this is the 
form of conduct most emphatically termed good. More- 
over, just as we there saw that evolution becomes the 
highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves 
the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in 
fellow-men ; so here we see that the conduct called good 
rises to the conduct conceived as best when it fulfills all 
three classes of ends at the same time. 

" Is there any postulate involved in these judgments on 
conduct? Is there any assumption made in calling good 
the acts conducive to life, in self or others, and bad those 
which directly or indirectly tend toward death, special or 
general? Yes; an assumption of extreme significance has 
been made — an assumption underlying all moral estimates." 
This assumption is that life is worth living. 

It is obvious, as Mr. Spencer shows, that upon this 
question depends entirely every decision concerning the 
goodness or badness of conduct. If life is worth living 
then all conduct that fosters life is to be approved ; if it is 
not worth living then such conduct is not to be approved. 



UTILITARIANISM. 



And in pointing out that the ultimate question, thercibre, is 
whether evolution, and especially that evolution which 
improves the adjustment of acts to ends, in ascending stages 
of organization, is or is not a mistake, he throws on those 
who claim that existence is not worth its pains the respon- 
sibility of showing that the whole of nature's development, 
from its simplest to its most complex forms, had better 
have been left undone. Moreover, "in calling good the 
conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which 
hinders or destroys it ; and in so implying that life is a 
blessing and not a curse ; we are inevitably asserting that 
conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are 
pleasurable or painful." 

"One theory only is imaginable, in pursuance of which 
other interpretations of good and bad can be given. This 
theory is that men were created with the intention that 
they should be sources of misery to themselves, and that 
they are bound to continue living that their Creator may 
have the satisfaction of contemplating their misery. Though 
this is not a theory avowedly entertained by many — though 
it is not formulated by any in this distinct way, yet not a few 
do accept it under a disguised form. Inferior creeds are 
pervaded by the belief that the sight of suffering is pleasing 
to the gods. Derived from bloodthirsty ancestors, such 
gods are naturally conceived as gratified by the infliction of 
pain : when living they delighted in torturing other beings, 
and witnessing torture is supposed still to give them delight. 
The implied conceptions long survive. It needs but to name 
Indian fakirs who hang on hooks, and Eastern dervishes 
who gash themselves, to show that in societies considerably 
advanced are still to be found many who think that sub- 
mission to anguish brings divine favor. And without 
enlarging on fasts and penances, it will be clear that there 



82 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

has existed, and still exists, among Christian peoples, the 
belief that the Deity whom Jephthah thought to propitiate 
by sacrificing his daughter may be propitiated by self- 
inflicted pains. Further, the conception accompanying 
this, that acts pleasing to self are offensive to God, has 
survived along with it, and still widely prevails ; if not 
in formulated dogmas, yet in beliefs that are manifestly 
operative. 

"Doubtless in modern days such beliefs have assumed 
qualified forms. The satisfaction which ferocious gods 
were supposed to feel in contemplating tortures has been 
in large measure transformed into the satisfaction felt by a 
deity in contemplating that self-infliction of pain which is 
held to further eventual happiness. But clearly those who 
entertain this modified view are excluded from the class 
whose position we are here considering. Restricting our- 
selves to this class — supposing that from the savage who 
immolates victims to a cannibal god there are descendants 
among the civilized who hold that mankind were made for 
suffering, and that it is their duty to continue living in 
misery for the delight of their Maker, we can only recognize 
the fact that devil- worshipers are not yet extinct." 

Having shown, therefore, that our ideas of the goodness 
or badness of conduct originate from our consciousness of 
the certainty or probability that they will produce pleasures 
or pains somewhere, Mr. Spencer passes to a consideration 
of the philosophy of those who make excellence of being, 
and of those who make virtuousness of action the standard 
of life. He points out that Aristotle puts himself in the 
category of those who make virtue the supreme end by 
seeking to define happiness in terms of virtue, instead of 
defining virtue in terms of happiness ; thereby allying 



UTILITARIANISM. 83 

himself to the Platonic belief that there is an ideal and 
absolute good. As Mr. Spencer remarks : — "As with good 
so with virtue — it is not singular but plural: in Aristotle's 
own classification, virtue, when treated of at large, is trans- 
formed into virtues. Those which he calls virtues must be 
so called in consequence of some common character that 
is either intrinsic or extrinsic. We may class things 
together either because they are made alike by all having 
in themselves some peculiarity, as we do vertebrate animals 
because they all have vertebral columns ; or we may class 
them together because of some community in their outer 
relations, as when we group saws, knives, mallets, harrows, 
under the head of tools. Are the' virtues classed as such 
because of some intrinsic community of nature? Then 
there must be identifiable a common trait in all the cardinal 
virtues which Aristotle specifies — 'Courage, Temperance, 
Liberality, Magnanimity, Magnificence, Meekness, Amiabil- 
ity or Friendhness, Truthfulness, Justice.' What now is 
the trait possessed in common by magnificence and meek- 
ness? and if any such common trait can be disentangled, is 
it that which also constitutes the essential trait in truthful- 
ness? The answer must be — No. The virtues, then, not 
being classed as such because of an intrinsic community 
of character, must be classed as such because of something 
extrinsic ; and this something can be nothing else than the 
happiness which Aristotle says consists in the practice of 
them. They are united by their common relation to this 
result, while they are not united by their inner natures." 
Taking two virtues considered as typically such in ancient 
and in modern times — courage and chastity — Mr. Spencer 
points out that if the former invariably brought misery to 
the individual and to the state, and that if the latter gener- 
ated discord between husband and wife, and entailed on 



84 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

their offspring suffering, disease and death, it would be 
impossible to regard them as virtues. 

When from those ethical estimates which take per- 
fection of nature or virtuousness of action as tests we pass to 
those which take for test rectitude of motive, we approach 
the intuitional theory of morals : the theory that there is 
"a natural sense of immediate excellence" which is con- 
sidered as a supernaturally derived guide. 

"Nevertheless, it may be shown that conduciveness to 
happiness, here represented as an incidental trait of the 
acts which receive these innate moral approvals, is really 
the test by which these approvals are recognized as moral. 
The intuitionists place confidence in these verdicts of 
conscience, simply because they vaguely, if not distinctly, 
perceive them to be consonant with the disclosures of that 
ultimate test. Observe the proof 

"By the hypothesis, the wrongness of murder is known 
by a moral intuition which the human mind was originally 
constituted to yield, and the hypothesis therefore negatives 
the admission that this sense of its wrongness arises, imme- 
diately or remotely, from the consciousness that murder 
involves deduction from happiness directly and indirectly. 
But if you ask an adherent of this doctrine to contrast his 
intuition with that of the Fijian, who, considering murder 
an honorable action, is restless until he had distinguished 
himself by killing some one, and if you inquire of him in 
what way the civilized intuition is to be justified in opposi- 
tion to the intuition of the savage, no course is open save 
that of showing how conformity to the one conduces to 
well-being, while conformity to the other entails suffering, 
individual and general. When asked why the moral sense 
which tells him it is wrong to take another man's goods 
should be obeyed rather than the moral sense of a Turcoman, 



UTILITARIANISM. 85 

who proves how meritorious he considers theft to be by 
making pilgrimages to the tombs of noted robbers to make 
offerings, the intuitionist can do nothing but urge that cer- 
tainly under conditions like ours, if not also under condi- 
tions like those of the Turcomans, disregard of men's claims 
to their property not only inflicts immediate misery, but 
involves a social state inconsistent with happiness. Or if, 
again, there is required from him a justification for his feel- 
ing of repugnance to lying, in contrast with the feeling of an 
Egyptian, who prides himself on skill in lying (even think- 
ing it praiseworthy to deceive without any further end than 
that of practicing deception), he can do no more than point 
to the social prosperity furthered by entire trust between 
man and man, and the social disorganization that follows 
universal untruthfulness — consequences that are necessarily 
conducive to agreeable feelings and disagreeable feelings 
respectively. The unavoidable conclusion is, then, that 
the intuitionist does not and cannot ignore the ultimate 
derivations of right and wrong from pleasure and pain. 
However much he may be guided, and rightly guided, by 
the decisions of conscience respecting the characters of acts, 
he has come to have confidence in these decisions, because 
he perceives vaguely but positively that conformity to them 
furthers the welfare of himself and others, and that disregard 
of them entails in the long run suffering on all. ' ' 

It will be observed that the argument is frankly 
materialistic ; being indeed that all creeds, codes of laws, 
and customs, have, consciously or unconsciously, founded 
themselves on a materialistic basis, aiming 2^^^^ permanent 
establishment of what the limited observing capacity of the 
time imagined it has discovered as the permanent good. 
The evolutionary conception of growth negatives this static 



86 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

idea, and shows that circumstances alter cases, what would 
be immoral — because prejudicial to individual and social life 
— under certain conditions, being, under other conditions, 
imperatively moral. The wide outlook we have recently- 
acquired over the changing moralities of time and place 
have already fixed this as a conviction in the minds of all 
intellectual people. In the first part of this book I have 
endeavored to show, by my references to Bebel's Woman 
and Socialism, and other avowedly Socialistic works, that 
Socialism is thoroughly in accord with this evolutionary 
philosophy. That all Socialists should apprehend this 
clearly seems to me of paramount importance, since other- 
wise their philosophy must lack coherence, and the conduct 
of their movement must be wanting in that clear-cut con- 
sistency which can alone lead to success. Such a compre- 
hension will show them that the thunders of the Vatican 
against Socialism are inevitable ; and it will also show them 
that, whatever differences may for the time being separate 
Individualists and Collectivists, all who accept the evolu- 
tionist theory of growth are their natural allies. It also 
explains that, when Mr. Spencer speaks of "rights," he 
actually means that the phenomena already investigated 
seem to him to prove that the observation of certain laws 
make for the increase of individual and social happiness — 
at any rate in the long run, — just as we admit that a knowl- 
edge and observance of the law of gravitation tends to the 
preservation of life. Similarly Socialists often say that the 
first conception to be got rid of is that of "Natural rights," 
meaning thereby that their philosophy is strictly utilitarian, 
and that any institution that proves inimical to advance 
cannot be tolerated because it claims to be a natural right. 
It is the dynamic as opposed to the static philosophy that 
I wish throughout to emphasize. 



UTILITARIANISM. 87 

We now enter with Mr. Herbert Spencer upon a con- 
sideration of the various ways in which conduct may be 
judged. We shall find him ridiculing the idea that rights 
and obligations can originate with Acts of Parliaments, and 
here all who accept the idea of growth — with its necessary 
corollary that circumstances alter cases — must agree with 
him. We shall also find Mm speaking of ' ' natural rights, ' ' 
but we shall see that he couples this declaration with elab- 
orate arguments drawn from physical, biological, psycho- 
logical and sociological investigations, all of which seem to 
prove to him the existence of certain laws non-observance 
of which hinders the development of life. Such laws we 
clearly have a right to observe. 

The surest characteristic, Mr. Spencer tells us, of intel- 
lectual progress is the development of the idea of causation ; 
for the development of this idea involves development of 
many other ideas, and it is only when science has accumu- 
lated examples of quantitative relations, foreseen and verified 
throughout a widening range of phenomena, that causations 
come to be conceived as necessary and universal. 

' ' How slowly, as a consequence of its dependence, the 
conception of causation evolves, a glance at the evidence 
shows. We hear with surprise of the savage who, falling 
down a precipice, ascribes the failure of his foothold to a 
malicious demon ; and we smile at the kindred notion of the 
ancient Greek, that his death was prevented by a goddess 
who unfastened for him the thong of the helmet by which 
his enemy was dragging him. But daily, without surprise, 
we hear men who describe themselves as saved from ship- 
wreck by 'Divine interposition,' who speak of having 
'providentially' missed a train which met with a fatal 
disaster, and who call it a ' mercy ' to have escaped injury 
from a falling chimney-pot — men who, in such cases, recog- 



88 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

nize physical causation no more than do the uncivilized or 
semi-civilized. The Veddah who thinks that failure to hit 
an animal with his arrow resulted from inadequate invoca- 
tion of an ancestral spirit, and the Christian priest who says 
prayers over a sick man in the expectation that the course 
of his disease will so be stayed, differ only in respect of the 
agent from whom they expect supernatural aid and the 
phenomena to be altered by him : the necessary relations 
among causes and effects are tacitly ignored by the last as 
much as by the first. Deficient belief in causation is, 
indeed, exemplified even in those whose discipline has been 
specially fitted to generate this belief — even in men of 
science. For a generation after geologists had become 
uniformitarians in geology, they remained catastrophists in 
biology ; while recognizing none but natural agencies in 
the genesis of the earth's crust, they ascribed to supernat- 
ural agency the genesis of the organisms on its surface. 
Nay more — among those who are convinced that living 
things in general have been evolved by the continued inter- 
action of forces everywhere operating, there are some who 
make an exception of man, or who, if they admit that his 
body has been evolved in the same manner as the bodies 
of other creatures, allege that his mind has been not evolved 
but specially created. If, then, universal and necessary 
causation is only now approaching full recognition, even 
by those whose investigations are daily reillustrating it, we 
may expect to find it very little recognized among men at 
large, whose culture has not been calculated to impress 
them with it, and we may expect to find it least recognized 
by them in respect of those classes of phenomena amid 
which, in consequence of their complexity, causation is 
most difficult to trace — the psychical, the social, the moral." 
These reflections are made, Mr. Spencer adds, because, 



UTILITARIANISM. 89 

on studying the various ethical theories, he is struck with 
the fact that they are all characterized either by entire 
absence of the idea of causation or by inadequate presence 
of it; all of them, whether theological, political, intuitional, 
or utilitarian, displaying, if not in the same degree, still 
each in a large degree, the defects which result from this 
lack. These theories he proceeds to consider in the order 
named. 

The still extant representative of the most ancient school 
of morals "is that which recognizes no other rule of conduct 
than the alleged will of God. This, which originates with 
the savage, whose only restraint beyond fear of his fellow-man 
is fear of an ancestral spirit, survives in great strength down 
to the present day, changed only by the gradual dying out 
of multitudinous minor supernatural agents and the accom- 
panying development of one universal supernatural agent. 
Systems of theology, and the systems of morality derived 
from them, all participate in the assumption that such and 
such actions are made good or bad simply by divine injunc- 
tion, and tacitly ignore the natural relations between acts 
and results." 

He then considers the position of those who, following 
Hobbes, hold that there can be neither justice nor injustice 
till a regularly constituted coercive power exists to issue 
and enforce commands, and that there is no other origin 
for good and bad in conduct than law ; who believe that 
moral obligation originates with Acts of Parliament, and can 
be changed this way or that by majorities ; who ridicule 
the idea that men have any natural rights, and allege that 
rights and duties are wholly the results of convention. To 
which it is answered that "the necessities which initiate 
government themselves prescribe the actions of govern- 
ment. If its actions do not respond to the necessities, they 
are unwarranted. The authority of law is, then, by the 



90 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

hypothesis, derived, and can never transcend the authority 
of that from which it is derived. If general good, or 
welfare, or utility is the supreme end, and if state enact- 
ments are justified as means to this supreme end, then state 
enactments have such authority only as arises from con- 
duciveness to this supreme end. When they are right, it 
is only because the original authority indorses them, and 
they are wrong if they do not bear its indorsement. That 
is to say, conduct cannot be made good or bad by law ; 
but its goodness or badness is to the last determined by its 
effects as naturally furthering or not furthering the lives of 
citizens." 

Of the intuitionists it is remarked that, though their 
theory forbids overt recognition of causation, in all their 
defenses of such theory there is an unavowed recognition 
of it ; while as to the utilitarian school, which at first sight 
appears to be distinguished from the rest by recognizing 
natural causation, the complaint is that as yet only some 
relation between cause and effect in conduct is recognized, 
and that until the relation is accepted a completely scientific 
form of knowledge has not been reached. The science is 
as yet only in the primitive stage when observations are 
accumulated and empirically generalized, and it will be 
only when such generalizations have been included in a 
rational generalization that it can become a developed 
science. Astronomy, geology and the science of life have 
reached this stage ; psychology and sociology are entering 
it, and ethics — being, as it is, a part of physical, biological, 
psychological and sociological science — can find its ultimate 
interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are 
common to all of them. We enter, therefore, upon the 
consideration of moral phenomena as a part of the aggregate 
of phenomena which evolution has wrought out. 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. gi 



CHAPTER III. 

EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 

APPROACHING the subject from the physical point 
of view, we find, as we mount from stage to stage of 
evolution, definite coherence succeeding aimless inco- 
herence. The animalcule moves at random ; to-day's wan- 
derings of a fish, though showing a slightly determined 
order, are unrelated to those of yesterday and to-morrow ; 
the bird that builds its nest and rears its chicks presents a 
dependent series of motions extending over a considerable 
period, and in civilized man obviously the definiteness and 
coherence attain their culmination. The more duly pro- 
portioned the conduct, and the more clearly defined its 
aim, the more perfect it is. But this truth, so readily 
admitted, is not all, and the defect in the current concep- 
tion of morality is that it usually identifies a moral life with 
a hfe little varied in its activities. Throughout the ascend- 
ing forms of life, along with increasing heterogeneity of 
structure and function, there goes increasing heterogeneity 
of conduct, and a life that does not display this heterogene- 
ity presents an example of a low order of evolution, is not 
only not moral but is the reverse of moral. 

"One who satisfies personal needs only goes through, 
other things equal, less multiform processes than one who 
also administers to the needs of wife and children. Suppos- 
ing there are no other differences, the addition of family 
relations necessarily renders the actions of the man who 
fulfills the duties of husband and parent more heterogeneous 



92 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



than those of the man who has no such duties to fulfill, or, 
having them, does not fulfill them ; and to say that his 
actions are more heterogeneous is to say that there is a 
greater heterogeneity in the combined motions he goes 
through. The like holds of social obligations. These, in 
proportion as a citizen duly performs them, complicate 
his movements considerably. If he is helpful to inferiors 
dependent on him, if he takes a part in political agitation, 
if he aids in diffusing knowledge, he, in each of these ways, 
adds to his kinds of activity — makes his sets of movements 
more multiform ; so differing from the man who is the slave 
of one desire or group of desires." And the increasing 
coherence, definiteness, and heterogeneity of the combined 
motions of fife are all instrumental to the better main- 
tenance of a moving equilibrium, to the acquirement of 
ability to maintain for a continually increasing period a 
balanced combination of internal actions in face of external 
forces tending to overthrow it. 

From the biological point of view the ideally moral man 
is one whose functions — many and varied in their kinds — 
are all discharged in degrees duly adjusted to the conditions 
of existence ; for, since each function has some relation to 
the needs of life non-fulfillment of it, in its normal propor- 
tion, is non-fulfillment of a requisite to complete life. The 
moral obligation is, therefore, not merely negative, it is also 
most distincdy positive : it not only requires us to restrain 
such vital activities as, in our present state, are often pushed 
to excess ; but it also requires us to carry on these vital 
activities up to their normal limits. 

It will be observed that here, as in many other places, 
the idea of "duty," which many Individualists who quote 
Herbert Spencer as an authority are apt to deride, is given 
the most prominent place. I am far, however, from sug- 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 



93 



gesting that such IndividuaHsts ignore the idea of "duty," 
as the term is commonly understood. On the contrary, 
the infinitely more reliable testimony of their own lives 
shows that they are exceedingly mindful of it, and most 
conscientiously abstain from trespassing on what they 
believe to be their neighbors' rights. 

The universal testimony of biology is that every pleasure 
increases, and every pain decreases vitality ; that every 
pleasure raises the tide of life, and every pain lowers it. 
"Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral 
speculation at large. From the estimates of right and 
wrong habitually framed, these physiological effects wrought 
on the actor by his feelings are entirely omitted. It is tacitly 
assumed that pleasures and pains have no reactions on the 
body of the recipient, affecting his fitness for the duties of 
life. The only reactions recognized are those on character, 
respecting which the current supposition is that acceptance 
of pleasures is detrimental and submission to pains bene- 
ficial. The notion, remotely descended from the ghost- 
theory of the savage, that mind and body are independent, 
has, among its various implications, this belief that states 
of consciousness are in no wise related to bodily states. 
' You have had your gratification — it is past ; and you are 
as you were before,' says the moralist to one. And to 
another he says, ' You have borne the suffering — it is over ; 
and there the matter ends.' Both statements are false. 
Leaving out of view indirect results, the direct results are 
that the one has moved a step away from death and the 
other has moved a step toward death." And after point- 
ing out that it is the remote, indirect result that the ortho- 
dox moralist exclusively views, regardless of the immediate 
beneficial or injurious effect of any act ; after reminding 
his readers that the vital functions accept no apologies on 



94 



ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. 



the ground that neglect of them was unavoidable, or was 
in pursuit of a noble aim ; and after dwelling on the folly 
of those who imagine that they can understand those special 
phenomena of human life with which ethics deals, while 
paying little or no attention to the general phenomena of 
human life, Mr. Spencer gives in detail the roots from 
which spring sentiments and ideas so adverse to the facts 
of life. 

"There is the theological root. As before shown, from 
the worship of cannibal ancestors who delighted in witness- 
ing tortures, there resulted the primitive conception of 
deities who were propitiated by the bearing of pains, and 
consequently angered by the receipt of pleasures. Through 
the religions of the semi-civilized, in which this conception 
of the divine nature remains conspicuous, it has persisted, 
in progressively modified forms, down to our own times, 
and still colors the beliefs both of those who adhere to the 
current creed and of those who nominally reject it. There 
is another root in the primitive and still-surviving militancy. 
While social antagonisms continue to generate war, which 
consists in endeavors to inflict pain and death while sub- 
mitting to the risks of pain and death, and which necessa- 
rily involves great privations, it is needful that physical 
suffering, whether considered in itself or in the evils it 
bequeaths, should be thought little of, and that among 
pleasures recognized as most worthy should be those which 
victory brings. Nor does partially developed industrialism 
fail to furnish a root. With social evolution, which implies 
transition from the life of wandering hunters to the life of 
settled peoples engaged in labor, and which, therefore, entails 
activities widely unlike those to which the aboriginal con- 
stitution is adapted, there comes an under-exercise of facul- 
ties for which the social state affords no scope, and an 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 



95 



overtaxing of faculties required for the social state — the 
one implying denial of certain pleasures, and the other 
submission to certain pains. Hence, along with that 
growth of population which makes the struggle for exist- 
ence intense, bearing of pains and sacrifice of pleasures is 
daily necessitated. 

"Now, always and everywhere, there arises among men 
a theory conforming to their practice. The savage nature, 
originating the conception of a savage deity, evolves a 
theory of supernatural control sufficiently stringent and 
cruel to influence his conduct. With submission to des- 
potic government severe enough in its restraints to keep 
in order barbarous natures, there grows up a theory of 
divine right to rule and the duty of absolute submission. 
Where war is made the business of life by the existence of 
warlike neighbors, virtues which are required for war come 
to be regarded as supreme virtues ; while, contrariwise, 
when industrialism has grown predominant, the violence 
and the deception which warriors glory in come to be held 
criminal. In like manner, then, there arises a tolerable 
adjustment of the actually accepted (not the nominally 
accepted) theory of right living to living as it is daily 
carried on. If the life is one that necessitates habitual 
denial of pleasures and bearing of pains, there grows up 
an answering ethical system under which the receipt of 
pleasures is tacitly disapproved and the bearing of pains 
avowedly approved. The mischiefs entailed by pleasures 
in excess are dwelt on, while the benefits which normal 
pleasures bring are ignored, and the good results achieved 
by submission to pains are fully set forth, while the evils 
are overlooked. 

' ' But while recognizing the desirableness of, and indeed 
the necessity for, systems of ethics adapted, like religious 



96 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

systems and political systems, to their respective times and 
places, we have here to regard the first as, like the others, 
transitional. We must infer that, like a purer creed and 
a better government, a truer ethics belongs to a more 
advanced social state. Led, a priori, to conclude that 
distortions must exist, we are enabled to recognize as such 
the distortions we find — answering in nature, as these do, 
to expectation. And there is forced on us the truth that 
a scientific morality arises only as fast as the one-sided 
conceptions adapted to transitory conditions are developed 
into both-sided conceptions. The science of right living 
has to take acount of all consequences in so far as they affect 
happiness, personally or socially, directly or indirectly, and 
by as much as it ignores any class of consequences by so 
much does it fail to be science." 

Turning to the psychological view of ethics, it is shown 
that, as evolution mounts, acts are adjusted to ends with a 
deliberation that takes into account remoter consequences ; 
it is pointed out that the more complex motives, and the 
more involved thought, have all along been of higher 
authority for guidance. Throughout the ascent self-preser- 
vation has been increased by the subjection of the present 
to the future. The animal that seizes its prey regardless 
of consequences is ever courting death ; the savage who 
takes no thought for the morrow meets sooner or later 
with starvation. This subjection of the present to the 
future increases as we reach the higher types and meet 
with ideal motives looking to distant ends. Hence arises 
the too hasty generalization that immediate satisfactions 
must not be valued, and, instead of understanding that the 
lower must yield to the higher when the two conflict, a 
conception is current that the lower feeling must be disre- 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 



garded even when there is no conflict. There springs up 
a false ascetism that regards whatever is pleasant as wrong, 
and ignores the primary sensations where they are entitled 
to speak imperatively. 

In the preceding paragraph we have been tracing the 
genesis of the moral consciousness, for its essential trait is 
the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling 
or feelings. Among the higher animals we see constant 
subordination of the simpler to the more compound feelings, 
as when a dog is restrained from snatching food by fear of 
the penalties which may come if he yields to his appetite : 
in man we see conscious subordination — introspection 
revealing the fact that one feeling has yielded to another. 
We have now to face a fact of profound significance, viz. : 
that throughout the earlier stages of man's evolution the 
self-restraint called "moral" has its root in fear. In the 
rudest groups consciousness of the evil which the anger of 
fellow-savages will entail is the check : as chieftainship 
becomes established the dread of angering the chief 
restrains, and political control begins to differentiate from 
the more indefinite control of mutual dread. Meanwhile 
the ghost-theory has been developing ; the double of the 
deceased chief is conceived as able to injure the survivors, 
and thus the religious check takes shape. Loyalty to the 
ruler is taught as the first duty, and the Divine injunctions 
— originally traditions of the dead king's will — inculcate 
the destruction of his enemies. Meanwhile the growing 
social organization gives birth to other restraints. War 
implies cooperation, and cooperation is prevented by intes- 
tine quarrels. The aggressions, therefore, that give rise to 
such quarrels are sternly checked, and a body of civil laws 
for their prevention is formed. Throughout the commands 
are obeyed not because of their acknowledged rectitude, but 



g8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

from fear of the penalties for disobedience. How largely 
we are still ruled by fear is well suggested in the following 
quotation : 

' ' Down to our own time we trace, in legal phrases, 
the original doctrine that the aggression of one citizen on 
another is wrong, and will be punished, not so m«uch 
because of the injury done him as because of the implied 
disregard of the king's will. Similarly, the sinfulness of 
breaking a Divine injunction was universally at one time, 
and is still by many, held to consist in the disobedience 
to God rather than in the deliberate entailing of injury ; 
and even now it is a common belief that acts are right 
only if performed in conscious fulfillment of the Divine 
will — nay, are even wrong if otherwise performed. The 
like holds, too, with that further control exercised by 
public opinion. On listening to the remarks made respect- 
ing conformity to social rules, it is noticeable that breach 
of them is condemned not so much because of any essential 
impropriety as because the world's authority is ignored. 
How imperfectly the truly moral control is e\'en now 
differentiated from these controls within which it has been 
evolving, we see in the fact that the systems of morality 
criticised at the outset severally identify moral control with 
one or other of them. For moralists of one class derive 
moral rules from the commands of a supreme political 
power. Those of another class recognize no other origin 
for them than the revealed Divine will. And though men 
who take social prescription for their guide do not formulate 
their doctrine, yet the belief, frequently betrayed, that con- 
duct which society permits is not blameworthy implies that 
there are those who think right and wrong can be made 
such by public opinion." 

Gradually from the pressure of political, religious and 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. gg 

social authority there emerge higher moral feelings which 
of themselves act as restraints of a higher order ; and later 
still, as the results of accumulated experiences of utility, 
gradually organized and inherited, these moral feelings 
grow into moral intuitions which operate independently of 
conscious experience. Murder and theft are abstained 
from, not from fear of the hangman or the jail, but 
intuitively. The point, however, constantly insisted on is 
that— 

' ' Only after political, religious, and social restraints 
have produced a stable community can there be sufficient 
experience of the pains, positive and negative, sensational 
and emotional, which crimes of aggression cause, as to 
generate that moral aversion to them constituted by con- 
sciousness of their intrinsically evil results. And more 
manifest still is it that such a moral sentiment as that of 
abstract equity, which is offended not only by material 
injuries done to men, but also by political arrangements 
that place them at a disadvantage, can evolve only after 
the social stage reached gives familiar experience both of 
the pains flowing directly from injustices and also of those 
flowing indirectly from the class privileges which make 
injustices easy. 

' ' Emerging as the moral motive does but slowly from 
amid the political, religious and social motives, it long 
participates in that consciousness of subordination to some 
external agency which is joined with them, and only as it 
becomes distinct and predominant does it lose this associated 
consciousness — only then does the feeling of obligation 
fade. 

"This remark implies the tacit conclusion, which will 
be to most very startling, that the sense of duty or moral 
obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moral- 



lOO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

ization increases. Startling though it is, this conclusion 
may be satisfactorily defended. Even now progress toward 
the implied ultimate state is traceable. The observation is 
not infrequent that persistence in performing a duty ends 
in making it a pleasure ; and this amounts to the admission 
that while at first the motive contains an element of coer- 
cion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act 
is performed without any consciousness of being obliged to 
perform it. The contrast between the youth on whom 
diligence is enjoined and the man of business so absorbed 
in affairs that he cannot be induced to relax, shows us how 
the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that 
it ought to be done, may eventually cease to have any such 
accompanying consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, the rela- 
tion comes to be reversed, and the man of business persists 
in work from pure love of it when told that he ought not. 
Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only. That the 
maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result 
solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, 
without any thought of must, and that the fostering of 
children by parents is in many cases made an absorbing 
occupation without any coercive feeling of ought, are obvious 
truths which show us that even now, with some of the 
fundamental other- regarding duties, the sense of obligation 
has retreated into the background of the mind. And it is 
in some degree so with other-regarding duties of a higher 
kind. Conscientiousness has in many outgrown that stage 
in which the sense of a compelling power is joined with 
rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there 
to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, 
or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable 
claim on him, but he is without thought of self-compulsion. 
He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. lOl 

in doing it, and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents 
him from having the satisfaction of doing it. 

"Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the 
social state, that element in the moral consciousness which 
is expressed by the word obligation will disappear. The 
higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on of 
life will be as much matters of course as are those lower 
actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper 
times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments 
will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as 
now do the sensations. And though, joined with their 
regulating influence when this is called for, will exist latent 
ideas of the evils which nonconformity would bring, these 
will occupy the mind no more than do ideas of the evils of 
starvation at the time when a healthy appetite is being 
satisfied by a meal." 

Viewed from the sociological standpoint we find that 
for every race there are laws of right living. Given its 
environment and structure there is for each kind of animal 
a set of motions adapted to secure the highest conservation 
its nature permits. For each there is a formula that favors 
most completely the activities of the individual and of the 
race, but in the case of man the formula has to include an 
additional factor — it must specially recognize the relations 
of each individual to others, in presence of whom, and in 
cooperation with whom, he has to live. 

"From the sociological point of view, then, ethics 
becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of 
conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise 
that the lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, 
alike in length and breadth. 

' ' But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to 



I02 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



put in the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually 
considered, and requires us to put in the foreground the 
welfare of the society as a whole. The life of the social 
organism must, as an end, rank above the lives of its units. 
These two ends are not harmonious at the outset, and 
though the tendency is toward harmonization of them, they 
are still partially conflicting. 

' ' As fast as the social state establishes itself, the preserva- 
tion of the society becomes a means of preserving its units. 
Living together arose because, on the average, it proved 
more advantageous to each than living apart; and this 
implied that maintenance of combination is maintenance of 
the conditions to more satisfactory living than the combined 
persons would otherwise have. Hence social self-preserva- 
tion becomes a proximate aim, taking precedence of the 
ultimate aim, individual self-preservation. 

"This subordination of personal to social welfare is, how- 
ever, contingent ; it depends on the presence of antagonistic 
societies. So long as the existence of a community is 
endangered by the actions of communities around, it must 
remain true that the interests of individuals must be sacri- 
ficed to the interests of the community, as far as is needful 
for the community's salvation. But if this is manifest, it is 
by implication manifest that when social antagonisms cease, 
this need for sacrifice of private claims to public claims 
ceases also ; or rather, there cease to be any public claims 
at variance with private claims. All along, furtherance of 
individual lives has been the ultimate end ; and if this 
ultimate end has been postponed to the proximate end of 
preserving the community's life, it has been so only because 
this proximate end was instrumental to the ultimate end. 
When the aggregate is no longer in danger, the final object 
of pursuit, the welfare of the units, no longer needing to be 
postponed, becomes the immediate object of pursuit. 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 



103 



"Consequently, unlike sets of conclusions respecting 
human conduct emerge, according as we are concerned 
with a state of habitual or occasional war, or are concerned 
with a state of permanent and general peace." 

During the gradual passage from militarism to indus- 
trialism a series of compromises between the moral code 
of enmity and the moral code of amity are effected ; each 
age and society adopting what under the circumstances is 
approximately the best, and the ideal being attainable only 
when international antagonism, and antagonism between 
individuals, have simultaneously ceased. For the highest 
life which accompanies completely evolved conduct requires 
not merely that cooperation which excludes all acts of 
aggression, but also that cooperation for the satisfaction 
of wants which gives the social state its raison d' etre. 

Successive forms of cooperation, in the order of their 
ascending complexity, are then passed under review, the 
conclusion reached being that ' ' only under voluntary 
agreement, no longer tacit and vague but overt and definite, 
can cooperation be harmoniously carried on when division 
of labor becomes established. And as in the simplest 
cooperation, where like efforts are joined to secure a com- 
mon good, the dissatisfaction caused in those who, having 
expended their labors, do not get their shares of the good, 
prompts them to cease cooperating ; as in the more advanced 
cooperation, achieved by exchanging equal labors of like 
kind expended at different times, aversion to cooperation 
is generated if the expected equivalent of labor is not 
rendered ; so in this developed cooperation the failure of 
either to surrender to the other that which was avowedly 
recognized as of like value with the labor or product given, 
tends to prevent cooperation by exciting discontent with 



I04 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

its results. And evidently, while antagonisms thus caused 
impede the lives of the units, the life of the aggregate is 
endangered by diminished cohesion." 

In Part II., Principles of Sociology, Mr. Spencer has 
shown that the fundamental principles of organization are 
the same for an individual organism and for a social organ- 
ism, since both consist of mutually dependent parts. The 
welfare of a living body implies an approximate equilibrium 
between waste and repair ; and each organ, like the entire 
organism, is wasted by performing its particular function, 
and has to restore itself from the materials brought to it by 
the joint agency of the other organs. Since each of the 
organs has to be paid in nutriment for its services by the 
rest, it follows that the due balancing of their respective 
claims and payments is requisite* directly for the welfare of 
each organ, and indirectly for the welfare of the organism ; 
for in a whole formed of mutually dependent parts anything 
which prevents due performance of its duty by one part 
reacts injuriously on all the parts. "With change of 
terms these statements and inferences hold of a society. 
That social division of labor which parallels in so many 
other respects the physiological division of labor parallels it 
in this respect also. . . The universal basis of cooperation 
is the proportioning of benefits received to benefits ren- 
dered." But although these are absolutely necessary to 
the existence of a harmonious society ' ' we have to recog- 
nize the fact that complete fulfillment of these conditions, 
original and derived, is not enough. Social cooperation 
may be such that no one is impeded in the obtainment of 
the normal return for effort, but contrariwise is aided by 
equitable exchange of services, and yet, much may remain 
to be achieved. There is a theoretically possible form of 
society, purely industrial in its activities, which, though 



EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 



105 



approaching nearer to the moral ideal in its code of conduct 
than any society not purely industrial, does not fully reach 
it. For while industrialism requires the life of each citizen 
to be such that it may be carried on without direct or 
indirect aggression on other citizens, it does not require 
his life to be such that it shall directly further the lives of 
other citizens. It is not a necessary implication of indus- 
trialism, as thus far defined, that each, beyond the benefits 
given and received by exchange of services, shall give and 
receive other benefits. A society is conceivable formed 
of men leading perfectly inoffensive lives, scrupulously ful- 
filling their contracts, and efficiently rearing their offspring, 
who yet, yielding to one another no advantages beyond 
those agreed upon, fall short of that highest degree of life 
which the gratuitous rendering of services makes possible. 
Daily experiences prove that every one would suffer many 
evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid assist- 
ance. The life of each would be more or less damaged 
had he to meet all contingencies single-handed. Further, 
if no one did for his fellows anything more than was required 
by strict performance of contract, private interests would 
suffer from the absence of attention to public interests. The 
limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached 
until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to 
others, there are spontaneous eflforts to further the welfare 
of others. 

"The leading traits of a code under which complete 
living through volu*itary cooperation is secured may be 
simply stated. The fundamental requirement is that the 
life-sustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the 
amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by 
them ; and this implies, firstly, that he shall suffer no direct 
aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that 



lo6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract. 
Observance of these negative conditions to voluntary- 
cooperation having faciliated life to the greatest extent by 
exchange of services under agreement, life is to be further 
facilitated by exchange of services beyond agreement : the 
highest life being reached only when, besides helping to 
complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of 
aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives." 



THE HIGHEST TYPE. iqj 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE HIGHEST TYPE. 

IN a series of criticisms upon Bentham and Prof. Sidg- 
wick Mr. Spencer calls attention to a fact of great sig- 
nificance — viz. : that ' ' during evolution there has been 
a superposing of new and more complex sets of means, and 
a superposing of the pleasures accompanying the uses of 
these successive sets of means, with the result that each of 
these pleasures has itself eventually become an end." 
Throughout, the pleasure attendant on the use of means to 
achieve an end becomes itself an end ; the use of each set 
of means, from the simplest and earliest to the most complex 
and most recently evolved, constitutes an obligation, and the 
obligation becomes a healthy pleasure. 

It will be understood that the Daia of Ethics itself is a 
sustained defence of the philosophy of rational utilitarianism. 
"I pointed out that it (rational utilitarianism) does not 
take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit, but takes 
for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain 
principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine 
welfare. And now we see that this amounts to recognition 
of that law, traceable throughout the evolution of conduct 
in general, that each later and higher order of means takes 
precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier and 
lower order of means. " 

Mr. Spencer then takes issue with Bentham' s statement 
that what happiness is every man knows, while as to what 



io8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

constitutes justice — that is on every occasion the very sub- 
ject matter of the dispute. He shows that the conception 
of justice has always been the same, viz. , equalness of treat- 
ment, but that the conceptions of happiness change con- 
stantly with time and circumstance. Justice is therefore a 
more easily intelligible end than happiness. But, further, 
"if there are any conditions without fulfillment of which 
happiness cannot be compassed, then the first step must be 
to ascertain these conditions with a view to fulfilling them ; 
and to admit this is to admit that not happiness itself must 
be the immediate end, but fulfillment of the conditions to 
its attainment must be the immediate end." He then 
proceeds to show, in a celebrated passage, from which in 
the first chapter of this book I have already quoted, that 
"while greatest happiness may vary widely in societies 
which, though ideally constituted, are subject to unlike 
physical circumstances, certain fundamental conditions to 
the achievement of this greatest happiness are common to 
all such societies. 

' ' Given a people inhabiting a tract which makes nomadic 
habits necessary, and the happiness of each individual will 
be greatest when his nature is so molded to the require- 
ments of his life that all his faculties find their due 
activities in daily driving and tending cattle, milking, 
migrating, and so forth. The members of a community 
otherwise similar, which is permanently settled, will sever- 
ally achieve their greatest happiness when their natures 
have become such that a fixed habitat, and the occupations 
necessitated by it, supply the spheres in which each instinct 
and emotion is exercised and brings the concomitant 
pleasure. The citizens of a large nation industrially organ- 
ized have reached their possible ideal of happiness when 
the producing, distributing, and other activities are such in 



THE HIGHEST TYPE. 



109 



their kinds and amounts that each citizen finds in them a 
place for all his energies and aptitudes, while he obtains 
the means of satisfying all his desires. Once more we may 
recognize as not only possible but probable the eventual 
existence of a community, also industrial, the members of 
which, having natures similarly responding to these require- 
ments, are also characterized by dominant aesthetic facul- 
ties, and achieve complete happiness only when a large 
part of life is filled with aesthetic activities. Evidently these 
different types of men, with their different standards of hap- 
piness, each finding the possibility of that happiness in his 
own society, would not find it if transferred to any of the 
other societies. Evidently though they might have in 
common such kinds of happiness as accompany the satis- 
faction of vital needs, they would not have in common 
sundry other kinds of happiness. 

"But now mark that while, to achieve greatest happi- 
ness in each of such societies, the special conditions to be 
fulfilled must differ from those to be fulfilled in the other 
societies, certain general conditions must be fulfilled in all 
the societies. Harmonious cooperation, by which alone 
in any of them the greatest happiness can be attained, is, 
as we saw, made possible only by respect for one another's 
claims : there must be neither those direct aggressions 
which we class as crimes against person and property, nor 
must there be those indirect aggressions constituted by 
breaches of contracts. So that maintenance of equitable 
relations between men is the condition to attainment of 
greatest happiness in all societies, however much the great- 
est happiness attainable in each may differ in nature, or 
amount, or both." 

The chapter concludes with paragraphs which, if only 
for their broad-mindedness, deserve reproduction in full. 



no ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

' ' After observing how means and end in conduct stand to 
one another, and how there emerge certain conclusions 
respecting their relative claims, we may see a way to 
reconcile sundry conflicting ethical theories. These sever- 
ally embody portions of the truth, and simply require 
combining in proper order to embody the whole truth. 

"The theological theory contains a part. If for the 
Divine will, supposed to be supernaturally revealed, we 
substitute the naturally revealed end toward which the 
Power manifested throughout evolution works, then, since 
evolution has been, and is still, working toward the highest 
life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which 
the highest life is achieved is furthering that end. The 
doctrine that perfection or excellence of nature should be 
the object of pursuit, is in one sense true, for it tacitly 
recognizes that ideal form of being which the highest life 
implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth, 
also, in the doctrine that virtue must be the aim, for this 
is another form of the doctrine that the aim must be to 
fulfill the conditions to achievement of the highest life. 
That the intuitions of a moral faculty should guide our 
conduct is a proposition in which a truth is contained, for 
these intuitions are the slowly organized results of experi- 
ences received by the race while living in presence of these 
conditions. And that happiness is the supreme end is 
beyond question true, for this is the concomitant of that 
highest life which every theory of moral guidance has 
distinctly or vaguely in view. 

"So understanding their relative positions, those ethical 
systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal 
aims are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems 
which make welfare, pleasure, happiness the cardinal aims. 
Though the moral sentiments generated in civilized men by 



THE HIGHEST TYPE. m 

daily contact with social conditions and gradual adaptation 
to them are indispensable as incentives and deterrents ; 
and though the intuitions corresponding to these senti- 
ments have, in virtue of their origin, a general authority 
to be reverently recognized, yet the sympathies and 
antipathies hence originating, together with the intellectual 
expressions of them, are, in their primitive forms, necessarily 
vague. To make guidance by them adequate to all require- 
ments, their dictates have to be interpreted and made 
definite by science : to which end there must be analysis of 
those conditions to complete Hving which they respond to, 
and from converse with which they have arisen. And 
such analysis necessitates the recognition of happiness for 
each and all, as the end to be achieved by fulfillment of 
these conditions. 

"Hence, recognizing in due degrees all the various 
ethical theories, conduct in its highest form will take as 
guides innate perceptions of right duly enlightened and 
made precise by an analytic intelligence, while conscious 
that these guides are proximately supreme solely because 
they lead to the ultimately supreme end, happiness special 
and general." 

In a chapter in the Data of Ethics, entitled ' ' The rela- 
tivitly of pains and pleasures, ' ' Mr. Spencer further shows 
us that the truth that the standard of happiness varies with 
the race, with different men of the same race, and even 
with the same men at different periods of life, is one of 
cardinal importance ; the effect, pleasant or the reverse, 
which external things have upon us depending upon the 
structure of our organism, and upon the state of the 
structure. To illustrate the wide divergences of sentiency 
that accompany the wide divergences of organization which 



112 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

evolution in general has brought about — in order that we 
may thereby better comprehend the divergences of sentiency 
which are to be expected from the further evolution of 
humanity — he passes to a consideration, first, of the gen- 
eral question of pain ; secondly, to that of pleasure. 

As regards the former, in the well-known insensibility 
to pain of idiots, and the comparative callousness of 
savages ; in the indifference with which a robust laboring 
man bears what to a highly nervous organization is torture : 
in these we have successive proofs that the question of pain 
depends largely upon the character of the structure exposed 
to it. That it also depends upon the condition of the 
structure is even more manifest. The sensibility of an 
external part depends upon its temperature : cool it below 
a certain point, and it becomes numb and insensible to 
pain : heat it so that the blood-vessels dilate and the 
tenderness is extreme. 

The relativity of pleasure is far more conspicuous. 
What is one man's meat is another's poison; what gives 
the keenest satisfaction at one time is rejected with disgust 
at another ; and a thousand instances might be cited to 
carry home the truth that the receipt of each agreeable 
sensation depends primarily on the existence of the structure 
which is called into play, and, secondarily, on the condition 
of that structure, as fitting it or unfitting it for activity. 
Similarly with emotional pleasures. This animal which, 
leading a life demanding solitary habits, has an organization 
adapted thereto, gives no sign of need for the presence of 
its kind. On the other hand a gregarious animal separated 
from the herd shows every mark of unhappiness while the 
separation continues, and equally distinct marks of joy on 
rejoining its companions. And throughout we see that 
those who have led lives involving particular kinds of 



THE HIGHEST TYPE. 



113 



activities have become so constituted that pursuance of 
those activities, exercising the correlative structures, yields 
the associated pleasures. 

"I have insisted," continues Mr. Spencer, "on these 
general truths with perhaps needless iteration, to prepare the 
reader for more fully recognizing a corollary that is practi- 
cally ignored. Abundant and clear as is fhe evidence, and 
forced though it is daily on every one's attention, the con- 
clusions respecting life and conduct which should be drawn 
are not drawn ; and so much at variance are these conclu- 
sions with current beliefs that enunciation of them causes a 
stare of incredulity. Pervaded as all past thinking has 
been, and as most present thinking is, by the assumption 
that the nature of every creature has been specially created 
for it, and that human nature, also specially created, is, 
like other natures, fixed — pervaded too as this thinking 
has been, and is, by the allied assumption that the agree- 
ableness of certain actions depends on their essential 
qualities, while other actions are by their essential qualities 
made disagreeable, it is difficult to obtain a hearing for the 
doctrine that the kinds of action which are now pleasurable 
will, under conditions requiring the change, cease to be 
pleasurable, while other kinds of action will become pleas- 
urable. Even those who accept the doctrine of evolution 
mostly hear with skepticism, or at best with nominal faith, 
the inferences to be drawn from it respecting the humanity 
of the future. 

"And yet, as shown in myriads of instances indicated 
by the few above given, those natural processes which have 
produced multitudinous forms of structure adapted to mul- 
titudinous forms of activity have simultaneously made 
these forms of activity pleasurable. And the inevitable 
implication is that within the limits imposed by physical 



114 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



laws there will be evolved, in adaptation to any new sets 
of conditions that may be established, appropriate structures 
of which the functions will yield their respective gratifi- 
cations. 

"When we have got rid of the tendency to think that 
certain modes of activity are necessarily pleasurable because 
they give us pleasure, and that other modes which do not 
please us are necessarily unpleasing, we shall see that the 
remolding of human nature into fitness for the require- 
ments of social life must eventually make all needful 
activities pleasurable, while it makes displeasurable all 
activities at variance with these requirements. When we 
have come fully to recognize the truth that there is nothing 
intrinsically more gratifying in the efforts by which wild 
animals are caught than in the efforts expended in rearing 
plants, and that the combined actions of muscles and 
senses in rowing a boat are not by their essential natures 
more productive of agreeable feeling than those gone 
through in reaping corn, but that everything depends on 
the cooperating emotions, which at present are more in 
accordance with the one than with the other, we shall infer 
that along with decrease of those emotions for which the 
social state affords litde or no scope, and increase of those 
which it persistendy exercises, the things now done with 
disHke from a sense of obligation will be done with imme- 
diate liking, and the things desisted from as a matter of 
duty will be desisted from because they are repugnant." 
And after showing that the corollary above drawn from the 
doctrine of evolution at large coincides with the corollary 
which past and present changes in human nature force on 
us, and that the leading contrasts of character between 
savage and civilized (as shown in the instances of those 
who prefer mercy to cruelty, industry to idleness, philan- 



THE HIGHEST TYPE. 115 

thropy to selfish gain) are just those contrasts to be expected 
fi-om the process of adaptation, he concludes the chapter 
with a passage which admirably illustrates the optimism of 
the evolutionist's creed. "Now, not only," he says, "is 
it rational to infer that changes like those which have been 
going on during civilization will continue to go on, but it 
is irrational to do otherwise. Not he who believes that 
adaptation will increase is absurd, but he who doubts that 
it will increase is absurd. Lack of iliith in such further 
evolution of humanity as shall harmonize its nature with its 
conditions adds but another to the countless illustrations of 
inadequate consciousness of causation. One who, leaving 
behind both primitive dogmas and primitive ways of look- 
ing at things, has, while accepting scientific conclusions, 
acquired those habits of thought which science generates 
will regard the conclusion above drawn as inevitable. He 
will find it impossible to believe that the processes which 
have heretofore so molded all beings to the requirements 
of their lives that they get satisfactions in fulfilling them 
will not hereafter continue so molding them. He will 
infer that the type of nature to which the highest social life 
affords a sphere such that every faculty has its due amount, 
and no more than the due amount, of function and accom- 
panying gratification, is the type of nature toward which 
progress cannot cease till it is reached. Pleasure being 
producible by the exercise of any structure which is adjusted 
to its special end, he will see the necessary implication to 
be that, supposing it consistent with maintenance of life, 
there is no kind of activity which will not become a source 
of pleasure if continued ; and that, therefore, pleasure will 
eventually accompany every mode of action demanded by 
social conditions." 



Ii6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER V. 
EGOISM. 

IN considering the comparative claims of Egoism and 
Altruism we now enter upon the question to which all 

the previous argument has been preliminary. The 
illustrations given are largely drawn from every-day, 
domestic life. "If," says Mr. Spencer, "insistence on 
them tends to unsettle established systems of belief, self- 
evident truths are by most people silently passed over, or 
else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most 
obvious inferences." One of these self-evident truths is 
that a creature must live before it can act ; that the acts 
by which each maintains his own life must precede in 
imperativeness all other acts of which he is capable ; that, 
unless each duly cares for himself, his care for all others is 
ended by death. 

"This permanent supremacy of egoism over altruism, 
made manifest by contemplating existing life, is further 
made manifest by contemplating life in course of evolution. 
"Those who have followed with assent the recent course 
of thought do not need telling that throughout past eras, 
the life, vast in amount and varied in kind, which has over- 
spread the earth has progressed in subordination to the law 
that every individual shall gain by whatever aptitude it has 
for fulfilling the conditions to its existence. The uniform 
principle has been that better adaptation shall bring greater 
benefit, which greater benefit, while increasing the pros- 



EGOISM. 



117 



perity of the better adapted, shall increase also its ability to 
leave offspring inheriting more or less its better adaptation. 
And, by implication, the uniform principle has been that 
the ill-adapted, disadvantaged in the struggle for existence 
shall bear the consequent evils, either disappearing when 
its imperfections are extreme, or else rearing fewer off- 
spring, which, inheriting its imperfections, tend to dwindle 
away in posterity. 

"It has been thus with innate superiorities ; it has been 
thus also with acquired ones. All along the law has been 
that increased function brings increased power, and that, 
therefore, such extra activities as aid welfare in any member 
of a race produce in its structures greater ability to carry 
on such extra activities — the derived advantages being 
enjoyed by it to the hightening and lengthening of its 
life. Conversely, as lessened function ends in lessened 
structure, the dwindling of unused faculties has ever entailed 
loss of power to achieve the correlative ends — the result 
of inadequate fulfillment of the ends being diminished abil- 
ity to maintain life. And by inheritance, such functionally 
produced modifications have respectively furthered or 
hindered survival in posterity. 

' ' As already said, the law that each creature shall take 
the benefits and the evils of its own nature, be they those 
derived from ancestry or those due to self-produced modi- 
fications, has been the law under which life has evolved 
thus far, and it must continue to be the law, however much 
further life may evolve. Whatever qualifications this 
natural course of action may now or hereafter undergo 
are qualifications that cannot, without fatal results, essen- 
tially change it. Any arrangements which in a consider- 
able degree prevent superiority from profiting by the 
rewards of superiority, or shield inferiority from the evils 



Il8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

it entails — any arrangements which tend to make it as well 
to be inferior as to be superior, are arrangements diametri- 
cally opposed to the progress of organization and the 
reaching of a higher life. 

' ' But to say that each individual shall reap the benefits 
brought to him by his own powers, inherited and acquired, 
is to enunciate egoism as an ultimate principle of conduct. 
It is to say that egoistic claims must take precedence of 
altruistic claims." 

He proceeds to show that under its biological aspect 
this proposition cannot be contested by those who agree 
in the doctrine of evolution, though they will not allow that 
admission of it under its ethical aspect is equally unavoid- 
able. But incapacity of every kind, and of whatever degree, 
causes unhappiness directly and indirectly — directly by 
the pain consequent on the overtaxing of inadequate fac- 
ulty, and indirectly by the non-fulfillment, or imperfect 
fulfillment, of certain conditions to welfare — conversely 
capacity of every kind brings happiness immediate and 
remote. "The mentally inferior individual of any race 
suffers negative and positive miseries, while the mentally 
superior individual receives negative and positive gratifi- 
cations. Inevitably, then, this law, in conformity with 
which each member of a species takes the consequences 
of its own nature — and in virtue of which the progeny of 
each member, participating in its nature, also takes such 
consequences — is one that tends ever to raise the aggregate 
happiness of the species, by furthering the multiplication 
of the happier and hindering that of the less happy." 
As health and capacity, disease and stupidity, are trans- 
mitted to descendants it follows that all current ideas as to 
the relative claims of egoism and altruism are vitiated just 
so far as they ignore the effect upon posterity of observance 
or neglect of the demands of the ' ' ego. ' ' 



EGOISM. 



119 



This appears to me an appropriate place to say a word 
upon the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest," a law 
which Mr. Spencer is convinced — and in no way do I, for 
my humble part, differ from him — makes enormously for 
general happiness, and is indeed its root. It is therefore 
regarded as no less than sacrilegious to attempt to impede 
the free working of this law, and the charge is continually 
made against Socialists by superficial critics that they 
propose to thwart and interfere with this beneficent law. 
I shall have occasion to touch upon another question that 
underlies this, when treating of Mr. Spencer's essay upon 
Progress: I allude to the question of " free-will. " Mean- 
while I may point out that the very men who in the infancy 
of Evolution, as a scientific doctrine, conceived it as the 
justification of the extremest Individualism, have already 
grasped the fact that it may also be used as the most 
powerful of arguments for Socialism. As typical of the 
mental change that has come with increased study I select 
the following from Prof. Wn-^ley' s Adnmiistrafwe Nihilism.'^^ 
Combating the laissez /aire proclivities of Mr. Spencer, he 
says: "But when men living in society have once become 
aware that their welfare depends upon two opposing ten- 
dencies of equal importance — the one restraining, the other 
encouraging, individual freedom — the question 'What are 
the functions of government?' is translated into another — 
namely. What ought we men, in our corporate capacity, to 
do, not only in the way of restraining that free individuality 
which is inconsistent with the existence of society ; but in 
encouraging that free individuality which is essential to the 
evolution of the social organization? The formula which 
truly defines the function of government must contain the 

*The Humboldt Library, -No. 125, p. 50. 



I20 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

solution of both the problems involved, and not merely of 
one of them." 

The exact point taken by Socialists, viz. , that coopera- 
tive economics is one of the ways in which we can work 
with Nature, insuring our survival by insuring our own 
fitness, individually and socially — just as a sensible man 
recognizes that he increases his chance of life by observing 
the laws of health — is well put by Mr. Sidney Webb in the 
Fabian Essays. There he tells us : " We know now that 
in natural selection at the stage of development where the 
existence of civilized mankind is at stake, the units selected 
from are not individuals, but societies. Its action at earlier 
stages, though analogous, is quite dissimilar. Among the 
lower animals physical strength or agility is the favored 
quality : if some heaven-sent genius among the cuttle-fish 
developed a delicate poetic faculty, this high excellence 
would not delay his succumbing to his hulking neighbor. 
When, higher up in the scale, mental cunning became the 
favored attribute, an extra brain convolution, leading 
primitive man to the invention of fire or tools, enabled a 
comparatively puny savage to become the conqueror and 
survivor of his fellows. 

"Brain culture accordingly developed apace; but we 
do not yet thoroughly realize that this has itself been super- 
seded as the 'selected' attribute, by social organization. 
The cultivated Athenians, Saracens, and Provencals went 
down in the struggle for existence before their respective 
competitors, who, individually inferior, were in possession 
of a, at that time, more valuable social organization. The 
French nation was beaten in the last war, not because the 
average German was an inch and a half taller than the 
average Frenchman, or because he had read five more 
books, but because the German social organism was, for 



EGOISM. 121 

the purposes of the time, superior in efficiency to the 
French. If we desire to hand on to the afterworld our 
direct influence, and not merely the memory of our excel- 
lence, we must take even more care to improve the social 
organism of which we form part, than to perfect our own 
individual developments." I have only here to add that, 
while our present system, with its necessary worship of 
what Mr. John Most calls "the Beast of Property," is 
admittedly engendering the most bitter discontent, few com- 
prehend how ample are the grounds for discontent, and 
how rapidly it is leading not to the survival of the fittest, 
but to the universal annihilation of body, mind and soul. 
According to statistics carefully compiled by the Fabian 
Society of England it appears that in London, the greatest 
wealth-center of the world, one in every five of the inhab- 
itants dies in the poor-house, the hospital or the lunatic 
asylum : that the average length of life of the members of 
the professional and well-to-do classes is 55 years, and of the 
workers in the immense East end district of Bethnal Green 
29. When the workingmen of this, and other countries, 
become intelligent enough to think it worth their while 
themselves to master and to proclaim aloud such facts, 
instead of leaving the task to a few students and philan- 
thropists, we shall hear very little more laudation of our 
existing system. On the contrary, there will be a general 
awakening to the fact that its continuation means the con- 
tinued, ceaseless slaughter of those, who, as the workers, 
live most in accord with Nature's law, whom a natural 
system would be most careful to preserve, and whom the 
world can least afford to lose. The present system has, 
however, from the merely physical side, more than this 
upon its conscience. Not only does it take life remorse- 
lessly, but it forces thousands — of whom the immense 



122 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

majority are from the working classes — to assist it by 
sending themselves out of existence. In the North Amer- 
ican Review for April, 1891, Dr. William Mathews has 
shown, as it has been often shown before, that as civilization 
advances suicides increase. In Europe 60,000 suicides are 
annually recorded, and unquestionably a large number 
escape official notice. 

Turning to the mental side of the question a truly ter- 
rifying array of evidence as to the increase of insanity 
confronts one. Such eminent English authorities on the 
subject of insanity as Bucknill and Crichton Browne tell us 
that "insanity attains its maximum development among 
civilized nation," and that "education and suicide are 
increasing all over Europe." The celebrated statistician 
M. G. Mulhall commences an article in the Contemporary 
Review of June, 1883, with these words : "The increase of 
insanity, so long doubted by the Lunacy Commissioners, 
is now, as Dr. Tuke observes, too patent to admit of ques- 
tion, and, as it is accompanied both here (Great Britain) 
and on the Continent by an increase of suicide, it is begin- 
ning to attract the notice of the world." He then goes on 
to prove that "in the United Kingdom the number of 
insane has almost doubled in twenty years, increasing three 
times faster than population." 

Turning again to the moral side, I touch but a moment 
upon the question of prostitution, since the comforting 
doctrine is apparently held that it is only the mentally or 
morally incapable who take to so shameful an occupation. 
It is, of course, inevitable that such should be driven to the 
wall, since they are entirely unfitted to survive ; and the 
pleasure of watching the infallible working of this beneficent 
law may be properly regarded as one of the legitimate 



EGOISM. 



123 



enjoyments of the elect. It would be certainly easy for me 
to pile up quotations showing the effect of economic condi- 
tions upon the growth of prostitution, and I might cap the 
climax with some edifying reflections as to the sale of 
human flesh — open and secret, legal and illegal — which 
society not only winks at but applauds. Before me, how- 
ever, lies a review from London Justice, of a book entitled 
Work Amo7ig the Fallen, by the Rev. Mr. Merrick, the 
chaplain of the well-known Millbank prison. It says : — 
"This book deals with cases of prostitutes with whom he 
has been brought into contact at Millbank. This number 
is stated to be 100,000, although Mr. Merrick takes 14,000 
for purposes of classification. But he make one assertion 
which is most important, that out of the whole 100,000 
cases not one hundred of the women professed to like their 
career of shame. Mr. Merrick also testifies to the fact that 
a great deal of occasional prostitution is forced on girls and 
women in order to get money to pay the rent when times 
are bad and work is slack. Having once taken the first 
step a girl is almost certain to become a prostitute." 

Mr. Spencer reminds us that there is yet another way 
in which the undue subordination of egoism to altruism is 
injurious, for in the first place excessive unselfishness gen- 
erates selfishness. "Every one can remember circles in 
which the daily surrender of benefits by the generous to 
the greedy has caused increase of greediness, until there 
has been produced an unscrupulous egoism intolerable to 
all around. There are obvious social effects of kindred 
nature. Most thinking people now recognize the demoral- 
ization caused by indiscriminate charity. They see how 
in the mendicant there is, besides destruction of the normal 
relation between labor expended and benefit obtained, a 



124 



ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. 



genesis of the expectation that others shall minister to his 
needs, showing itself sometimes in the venting of curses on 
those who refuse. 

' ' Next consider the remote results. When the egoistic 
claims are so much subordinated to the altruistic as to pro- 
duce physical mischief, the tendency is toward a relative 
decrease in the number of the altruistic, and therefore an 
increased predominance of the egoistic. Pushed to extremes, 
sacrifice of self for the benefit of others leads occasionally 
to death before the ordinary period of marriage ; leads 
sometimes to abstention from marriage, as in sisters of 
charity ; leads sometimes to an ill-health or a loss of attrac- 
tiveness which prevents marriage ; leads sometimes to non- 
acquirement of the pecuniary means needed for marriage ; 
and in all these cases, therefore, the unusually altruistic 
leave no descendants. Where the postponement of per- 
sonal welfare to the welfare of others has not been carried 
so far as to prevent marriage, it yet not unfrequently occurs 
that the physical degradation resulting from years of self- 
neglect causes infertility, so that again the most altruis- 
tically-natured leave no like-natured posterity. And then 
in less marked and more numerous cases the resulting 
enfeeblement shows itself by the production of relatively 
weak offspring, of whom some die early, while the rest are 
less likely than usual to transmit the parental type to future 
generations. Inevitably, then, by this dying out of the 
especially unegoistic, there is prevented that desirable 
mitigation of egoism in the average nature which would 
else have taken place. Such disregard of self as brings 
down bodily vigor below the normal level eventually 
produces in the society a counterbalancing excess of regard 
for self. 

*■ ' That egoism precedes altruism in order of imperative- 



EGOISM. 



125 



ness is thus clearly shown. The acts which make continual 
life possible must, on the average, be more peremptory 
than all those other acts which life makes possible, including 
the acts which benefit others. Turning from life as existing 
to life as evolving, we are equally shown this. Sentient 
beings have progressed from low to high types, under the 
law that the superior shall profit by their superiority and 
the inferior shall suffer from their inferiority. Conformity 
to this law has been, and is still, needful, not only for the 
continuance of life but for the increase of happiness, since 
the superior are those having faculties better adjusted to 
the requirements — faculties, therefore, which bring in their 
exercise greater pleasure and less pain. 

"More special considerations join these more general 
ones in showing us this truth. Such egoism as preserves 
a vivacious mind in a vigorous body furthers the happiness 
of descendants, whose inherited constitutions make the 
labors of life easy and its pleasures keen ; while, conversely, 
unhappiness is entailed on posterity by those who bequeath 
them constitutions injured by self-neglect. Again, the 
individual whose well- conserved life shows itself in over- 
flowing spirits becomes, by his mere existence, a source of 
pleasure to all around, while the depression which com- 
monly accompanies ill-health diffuses itself through family 
and among friends. A further contrast is that whereas one 
who has been duly regardful of self retains the power of 
being helpful to others there results from self-abnegation in 
excess not only an inability to help others but the infliction 
of positive burdens on them. Lastly, we come upon the 
truth that undue altruism increases egoism, both directly in 
contemporaries and indirectly in posterity. 

' ' And now observe that though the general conclusion 
enforced by these special conclusions is at variance with 



126 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

nominally accepted beliefs, it is not at variance with actually- 
accepted beliefs. While opposed to the doctrine which 
men are taught should be acted upon, it is in harmony with 
the doctrine which they do act upon and dimly see must 
be acted upon. For omitting such abnormalities of con- 
duct as are instanced above, every one, alike by deed and 
word, impHes that in the business of life personal welfare 
is the primary consideration. The laborer looking for 
wages in return for work done, no less than the merchant 
who sells goods at a profit, the doctor who expects fees for 
advice, the priest who calls the scene of his ministrations 
"a living," assumes as beyond question the truth that 
selfishness, carried to the extent of enforcing his claims 
and enjoying the returns his efforts bring, is not only 
legitimate but essential. Even persons who avow a con- 
trary conviction prove by their acts that it is inoperative. 
Those who repeat with emphasis the maxim, ' Love your 
neighbor as yourself,' do not render up what they possess 
so as to satisfy the desires of all as much as they satisfy 
their own desires. Nor do those whose extreme maxim 
is, 'Live for others,' differ appreciably from people around 
in their regards for personal welfare, or fail to appropriate 
their shares of life's pleasures. In short, that which is 
above set forth as the belief to which scientific ethics leads 
us is that which men do really believe, as distinguished from 
that which they believe they believe. 

"Finally, it maybe remarked that a rational egoism, 
so far from implying a more egoistic human nature, is con- 
sistent with a human nature that is less egoistic. For 
excesses in one direction do not prevent excesses in the 
opposite direction, but rather extreme deviations from the 
mean on one side lead to extreme deviations on the other 
side. A society in which the most exalted principles of 



EGOISM. 



127 



self-sacrifice for the benefit of neighbors are enunciated may 
be a society in which unscrupulous sacrifice of alien fellow- 
creatures is not only tolerated but applauded. Along with 
professed anxiety to spread these exalted principles among 
heathens there may go the deliberate fastening of a quarrel 
upon them with a view to annexing their territory. Men 
who every Sunday have listened approvingly to injunctions 
carrying the regard for other men to an impracticable extent 
may yet hire themselves out to slay, at the word of com- 
mand, any people in any part of the world, utterly indiffer- 
ent to the right or wrong of the matter fought about. And 
as in these cases transcendent altruism in theory co-exists 
with brutal egoism in practice, so, conversely, a more qual- 
ified altruism may have for its concomitant a greatly mod- 
erated egoism. For asserting the due claims of self is, 
by implication, drawing a limit beyond which the claims 
are undue, and is, by consequence, bringing into greater 
clearness the claims of others. ' ' 

It appears to me desirable here to say a word respecting 
the charge made by Mr. Spencer in the foregoing passage 
against excessive altruism, viz., that it generates selfishness ; 
a charge that starts a train of investigations leading to the 
most weighty conclusions. For if this charge be true, as 
it obviously is, it reminds us that we have a duty to our- 
selves, to see that no undue advantage is taken of us, and 
that we have equally a duty to those who would take such 
advantage. Natural history supplies us with innumerable 
instances of the evil that parasites afflict not only upon 
those whom they select as their prey, but also on them- 
selves ; the neglect of performing life duties resulting inva- 
riably in degeneration, decay, and ultimately in death. So 
it is with individuals, with classes and with races ; the 



128 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

cowardice that, shirking the duties of Hfe, seeks to impose 
them upon others, and the cowardice that submits to the 
imposition, being punished by nature with absolutely impar- 
tial hand. It is thus an open question which has suffered 
most severely from the injustices inflicted — the slave-owner 
or the slave ; and it is clear that in insisting upon such a 
reconstruction as shall compel all parasites to be useful 
members of society the working class will have the satis- 
faction not only of doing justice to themselves, but also of 
actually doing good to those who have oppressed them. 
That decay is the fate of all idle aristocracies is amply 
evidenced by history, and there is no earthly reason for 
supposing that the aristocracy of the money-bag will be 
any exception to the rule. 



ALTRUISM. 



129 



CHAPTER VI. 

ALTRUISM. 

PASSING to altruism — which term must be taken as 
inckiding all acts by which offspring are preserved and 
the species maintained — we find that while primarily- 
dependent on egoism, yet secondarily egoism is dependent 
on it. Both have been evolving simultaneously, "and 
each higher species, using its improved faculties primarily 
for egoistic benefit, has spread in proportion as it has used 
them secondarily for altruistic benefit. The imperativeness 
of altruism as thus understood is, indeed, no less than the 
imperativeness of egoism was shown to be. For while, on 
the one hand, a falhng short of normal egoistic acts entails 
enfeeblement or loss of life, and therefore loss of ability to 
perform altruistic acts ; on the other hand such defect of 
altruistic acts as causes death of olfspring or inadequate 
development of them involves disappearance from future 
generations of the nature that is not altruistic enough — so 
decreasing the average egoism. In short, every species is 
continually purifying itself from the unduly egoistic individ- 
uals, while there are being lost to It the unduly altruistic 
individuals." 

As the advance has been by degrees from unconscious 
to conscious parental altruism, so has it been from the 
altruism of the family to social altruism, altruistic relations 
in the political group being only rendered possible by the 
attainment of highly developed forms in the domestic 
group. For instance, it is stated that tribes in which 



I30 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

promiscuity prevails or in which the marital relations are 
transitory, and tribes in which polyandry entails indefinite 
relationships have shown themselves incapable of much 
organization. "Only where monogamic marriage has be- 
come general and eventually universal — only where there 
have consequently been established the closest ties of 
blood — -only where family altruism has been fostered has 
social altruism become conspicuous. . . . 

' ' Recognizing this natural transition we are here chiefly 
concerned to observe that throughout the latter stages of 
the progress, as throughout the former, increase of egoistic 
satisfactions has depended on growth of regard for the 
satisfactions of others. On contemplating a line of succes- 
sive parents and offspring, we see that each, enabled while 
young to live by the sacrifices predecessors make for it, 
itself makes, when adult equivalent sacrifices for successors ; 
and that in default of this general balancing of benefits 
received by benefits given the line dies out. Similarly it is 
manifest that in society each generation of members, 
indebted for such benefits as social organization yields them 
to preceding generations, who have by their sacrifices 
elaborated this organization, are called on to make for 
succeeding generations such kindred sacrifices as shall at 
least maintain this organization, if they do not improve it — 
the alternative being decay and eventual dissolution of the 
society, implying gradual decrease in the egoistic satisfactions 
of its members." 

There follows a consideration of the various ways in 
which, under social conditions, personal welfare depends 
on regard for the welfare of others. At the outset where 
men unite for defense, or for other purposes, the increase 
of egoistic satisfactions which the social state brings can be 
purchased only by altruism sufficient to cause some recog- 



ALTRUISM. 



131 



nition of others' claims, and, whether it be in the earhest 
and rudest stage where the cooperation is merely for 
defense, or in the more developed stage of industrial 
cooperation, it is obvious that the prevalence of antagonisms 
among members of the union impedes the activities carried 
on by each. Hence, each profits egoistically from the 
growth of an altruism which leads each to aid in preventing 
or diminishing the violence of others. 

So, again, the undue egoism which displays itself in 
breaches of contract produces incessant friction, and the 
altruism which teaches that honesty is the best policy 
becomes the accepted rule. And, further, it is clearly seen 
that personal welfare is promoted by making certain 
sacrifices for social welfare, since defective governmental 
arrangements carry loss to every individual. ' ' So that on 
such altruistic actions as are implied, firstly in being just, 
secondly in seeing justice done between others, and thirdly 
in upholding and improving the agencies by which justice 
is administered, depend, in large measure, the egoistic 
satisfactions of each. 

"But the identification of personal advantage with the 
advantage of fellow-citizens is much wider than this. In 
various other ways the well-being of each rises and falls 
with the well-being of all. 

' ' A weak man left to provide for his own wants sufiers 
by getting smaller amounts of food and other necessaries 
than he might get were he stronger. In a community 
formed of weak men, who divide their labors and exchange 
the products, all suffer evils from the weakness of their 
fellows. The quantity of each kind of product is made 
deficient by the deficiency of laboring power, and the share 
each gets for such share of his own product as he can 
afford to give is relatively small. Just as the maintenance 



132 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



of paupers, hospital patients, inmates of asylums, and others 
who consume but do not produce, leaves to be divided 
among' producers a smaller stock of commodities than 
would exist were there no incapables, so must there be left 
a smaller stock of commodities to be divided, the greater 
the number of inefficient producers, or the greater the 
average deficiency of producing power. Hence, whatever 
decreases the strength of men in general restricts the 
gratifications of each by making the means to them dearer. 

"More directly and more obviously does the bodily 
well-being of his fellows concern him, for their bodily ill- 
being, when it takes certain shapes, is apt to bring similar 
bodily ill-being on him. If he is not himself attacked by 
cholera, or small-pox, or typhus, when it invades his 
neighborhood, he often suffers a penalty through his 
belongings. Under conditions spreading it, his wife catches 
diphtheria, or his servant is laid up with scarlet fever, or 
his children take now this and now that infectious disorder. 
Add together the immediate and remote evils brought on 
him year after year by epidemics, and it becomes manifest 
that his egoistic satisfactions are greatly furthered by such 
altruistic activities as render disease less prevalent. 

' ' With the mental as well as with the bodily states of 
fellow-citizens, his enjoyments are in multitudinous ways 
bound up. Stupidity like weakness raises the cost of com- 
modities. Where farming is unimproved, the prices of 
food are higher than they would else be ; where antiquated 
routine maintains itself in trade, the needless expense of 
distribution weighs on all ; where there is no inventiveness, 
every one loses the benefits which improved appliances 
diffuse. Other than economic evils come from the average 
unintelligence — periodically through the manias and panics 
that arise because traders rush in herds all to buy or all to 



ALTRUISM. 



133 



sell; and habitually through the maladministration of justice, 
which people and rulers alike disregard while pursuing this 
or that legislative will-o'-the-wisp. Closer and clearer is 
the dependence of his personal satisfactions on others' 
mental states which each experiences in his household. 
Unpunctuality and want of system are perpetual sources of 
annoyance. The unskillfulness of the cook causes frequent 
vexation and occasional indigestion. Lack of forethought 
in the housemaid leads to a fall over a bucket in a dark 
passage. And inattention to a message or forgetfulness in 
delivering it entails failure in an important engagement. 
Each, therefore, benefits egoistically by such altruism as 
aids in raising the average intelligence. I do not mean 
such altruism as taxes ratepayers that children's minds 
may be filled with dates, and names, and gossip about 
kings, and narratives of battles, and other useless informa- 
tion no amount of which will make them capable workers 
or good citizens ; but I mean such altruism as helps to 
spread a knowledge of the nature of things and to cultivate 
the power of applying that knowledge. 

"Yet again, each has a private interest in public morals, 
and profits by improving them. Not in large ways only, 
by aggressions and breaches of contract, by adulterations 
and short measures, does each suffer from the general 
unconscientiousness, but in more numerous small ways. 
Now it is through the untruthfulness of one who gives a 
good character to a bad servant ; now it is by the reckless- 
ness of a laundress who, using bleaching agents to save 
trouble in washing, destroys his linen ; now it is by the 
acted falsehood of railway passengers who, by dispersed 
coats, make him believe that all the seats in a compartment 
are taken when they are not. Yesterday the illness of his 
child, due to foul gases, led to the discovery of a drain that 



134 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



had become choked because it was ill-made by a dishonest 
builder under supervision of a careless or bribed surveyor. 
To-day workmen employed to rectify it bring on him cost 
and inconvenience by dawdling ; and their low standard of 
work, determined by the unionist principle that the better 
workers must not discredit the worse by exceeding them 
in efficiency, he may trace to the immoral belief that the 
unworthy should fare as well as the worthy. To-morrow 
it turns out that business for the plumber has been provided 
by damage which the bricklayers have done. 

"Thus the improvement of others, physically, intellect- 
ually, and morally, personally concerns each, since their 
imperfections tell in raising the cost of all the commodities 
he buys, in increasing the taxes and rates he pays, and in 
the losses of time, trouble, and money, daily brought on him 
by others' carelessness, stupidity, or unconscientiousness." 

It is further pointed out that egoism unqualified by 
altruism habitually fails. "Self-gratifications, considered 
separately or in the aggregate, lose their intensities by that 
too great persistence in them which results if they are made 
the exclusive objects of pursuit. The law that function 
entails waste, and that faculties yielding pleasure by their 
action cannot act incessantly without exhaustion and accom- 
panying satiety, has the implication that intervals during 
which altruistic activities absorb the energies are intervals 
during which the capacity for egoistic pleasure is recover- 
ing its. full degree. The sensitiveness to purely personal 
enjoyments is maintained at a higher pitch by those who 
minister to the enjoyments of others than it is by those who 
devote themselves wholly to personal enjoyments." 

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the range of 
aesthetic gratifications is wider for the altruistic nature than 
for the egoistic nature. ' ' The joys and sorrows of human 



ALTRUISM. 



135 



beings form a chief element in the subject-matter of art, and 
evidently the pleasures which art gives increase as the 
fellow-feeling with these joys and sorrows strengthens. If 
we contrast early poetry occupied mainly with war and 
gratifying the savage instincts by descriptions of bloody 
victories, with the poetry of modern times, in which the 
sanguinary forms but a small part, while a large part, 
dealing with the gentler affections, enlists the feelings of 
readers on behalf of the weak, we are shown that with the 
development of a more altruistic nature there has been 
opened a sphere of enjoyment inaccessible to the callous 
egoism of barbarous times. So, too, between the fiction 
of the past and the fiction of the present there is the differ- 
ence that while the one was almost exclusively occupied 
with the doings of the ruling classes, and found its plots in 
their antagonisms and deeds of violence, the other, chiefly 
taking stories of peaceful life for its subjects, and to a con- 
siderable extent the life of the humbler classes, discloses a 
new world of interest in the every-day pleasures and pains 
of ordinary people. A like contrast exists between early 
and late forms of plastic art. When not representing acts 
of worship, the wall sculptures and wall paintings of the 
Assyrians and Egyptians, or the decorations of temples 
among the Greeks, represented deeds of conquest ; whereas 
in modern times, while the works which glorify destructive 
activities are less numerous, there are an increasing number 
of works gratifying to the kindlier sentiments of spectators. 
To see that those who care nothing about the feelings of 
other beings are, by implication, shut out from a wide range 
of aesthetic pleasures, it needs but to ask whether men 
who delight in dog-fights may be expected to appre- 
ciate Beethoven's 'Adelaida,' or whether Tennyson's 'In 
Memoriam ' would greatly move a gang of convicts. 



136 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

' ' From the dawn of life, then, egoism has been dependent 
upon altruism as altruism has been dependent upon egoism ; 
and in the course of evolution the reciprocal services of the 
two have been increasing." 

Lastly, "an indication must be added of the truth, 
scarcely at all recognized, that this dependence of egoism 
upon altruism ranges beyond the limits of each society, and 
tends ever toward universality. That within each society 
it becomes greater as social evolution, implying increase 
of mutual dependence, progresses, need not be shown : and 
it is a corollary that as fast as the dependence of societies 
on one another is increased by commercial intercourse, the 
internal welfare of each becomes a matter of concern to the 
others. That the impoverishment of any country, diminish- 
ing both its producing and consuming powers, tells detri- 
mentally on the people of countries trading with it, is a 
commonplace of political economy. Moreover, we have 
had of late years abundant experience of the industrial 
derangements through which distress is brought on nations 
not immediately concerned, by wars between other nations. 
And if each community has the egoistic satisfaction of its 
members diminished by aggressions of neighboring com- 
munities on one another, still more does it have them 
diminished by its own aggressions. One who marks how, 
in various parts of the world, the unscrupulous greed of 
conquest, cloaked by pretenses of spreading the blessings 
of British rule and British religion, is now reacting to the 
immense detriment of the industrial classes at home, alike 
by increasing expenditure and paralyzing trade, may see 
that these industrial classes, absorbed in questions about 
capital and labor, and thinking themselves unconcerned in 
our doings abroad, are suffering from lack of that wide- 
reaching altruism which should insist on just dealings with 



ALTRUISM. 137 



other peoples, civilized or savage. And he may also see 
that beyond these immediate evils they will for a genera- 
tion to come suffer the evils that must flow from resuscitating 
the type of social organization which aggressive activities 
produce, and from the lowered moral tone which is its 
accompaniment. ' ' 



138 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER VII. 
STRIKING THE BALANCE. 

IN a chapter entitled ' ' Trial and Compromise ' ' the 
"greatest-happiness principle," as enunciated by Ben- 
tham and his followers, is analyzed, with the result that 
making general happiness the end of action is shown realiy 
to mean the maintaining what we call equitable relations 
among individuals ; and the pure altruism which requires 
that men should live exclusively for others is shown to be 
impossible of realization. From the biological view of 
ethics it has already been shown that pleasures accompany 
normal exercise of functions, and that complete life depends 
on complete discharge of functions, and therefore on receipt 
of the correlative pleasures. Hence to yield up normal 
pleasures is to yield up so much life. "Complete abne- 
gation means death ; excessive abnegation means illness ; 
abnegation less excessive means physical degradation and 
consequent loss of power to fulfill obligations." The 
pleasures that are inseparable from maintenance of the 
physique in an uninjured state, and the pleasures that arise 
from successful action, are personal pleasures that cannot 
be transferred. And since pure altruism is necessarily 
self-destructive, the need for a compromise between egoism 
and altruism becomes conspicuous. "We are forced to 
recognize the claims which his own well-being has on the 
attention of each by noting how in some directions we 
come to a deadlock, in others to contradictions, and in 
others to disastrous results, if they are ignored. Con- 



STRIKING THE BALANCE. 



139 



versely, it is undeniable that disregard of others by each 
carried to a great extent is fatal to society, and carried to 
a still greater extent is fatal to the family, and eventually 
to the race. Egoism and altruism are therefore co-essen- 
tial." And as corporate happiness, like individual hap- 
piness, to be pursued effectively must be pursued not 
directly but indirectly, the question is what must be the 
general nature of the means through which it is to be 
pursued. 

"It is admitted that self-happiness is, in a measure, to 
be obtained by furthering the happiness of others. May 
it not be true that, conversely, general happiness is to be 
obtained by furthering self-happiness? If the well-being 
of each unit is to be reached partly through his care for 
the well-being of the aggregate, is not the well-being of the 
aggregate to be reached partly through the care of each 
unit for himself? Clearly, our conclusion must be that 
general happiness is to be achieved mainly through the 
adequate pursuit of their own happinesses by individuals, 
while, reciprocally, the happinesses of individuals are to be 
achieved in part by their pursuit of the general happiness. 

"And this is the conclusion embodied in the progress- 
ing ideas and usages of mankind. This compromise between 
egoism and altruism has been slowly establishing itself; and 
toward recognition of its propriety, men's actual beliefs, as 
distinguished from their nominal beliefs, have been gradu- 
ally approaching. Social evolution has been bringing 
about a state in which the claims of the individual to the 
proceeds of his activities, and to such satisfactions as they 
bring, are more and more positively asserted, at the same 
time that insistence on others' claims and habitual respect 
for them have been increasing. Among the rudest savages 
personal interests are very vaguely distinguished from the 



140 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



interests of others. In early stages of civilization, the 
proportioning of benefits to efforts is extremely rude : 
slaves and serfs get for work arbitrary amounts of food 
and shelter : exchange being infrequent, there is little to 
develop the idea of equivalence. But as civilization 
advances and status passes into contract, there comes daily 
experience of the relation between advantages enjoyed and 
labor given — the industrial system maintaining, through 
supply and demand, a due adjustment of the one to the 
other. And this growth of voluntary cooperation — this 
exchange of services under agreement has been necessarily 
accompanied by decrease of aggressions one upon another, 
and increase of sympathy, leading to exchange of services 
beyond agreement. That is to say, the more distinct 
assertion of individual claims and more rigorous appor- 
tioning of personal enjoyments to efforts expended have 
gone hand in hand with growth of that negative altruism 
shown in equitable conduct and that positive altruism shown 
in gratuitous aid. 

' ' A higher phase of this double change has in our own 
times become conspicuous. If, on the one hand, we note 
the struggles for political freedom, the contests between 
labor and capital, the judicial reforms made to facilitate 
enforcement of rights, we see that the tendency still is 
toward complete appropriation by each of whatever bene- 
fits are due to him, and consequent exclusion of his fellows 
from such benefits. On the other hand, if we consider 
what is meant by the surrender of power to the masses, 
the abolition of class-privileges, the efforts to diffuse knowl- 
edge, the agitations to spread temperance, the multitudin- 
ous philanthropic societies, it becomes clear that regard for 
the well-being of others is increasing pari passu with the 
taking of means to secure personal well-being." 



STRIKING THE BALANCE. 



141 



It would be impossible to pass the last paragraph with- 
out a word of criticism, though the most obvious reflections 
I postpone to the chapters in which Mr. Spencer's claim 
that our present system is one of "voluntary cooperation," 
a "regime of willinghood," is examined. As regards 
charities I have already shown, when considering his posi- 
tion on the land question, that one of the main curses of 
charity under our competitive system is that it is actually 
exploited by our enterprising capitalists as a method of 
acquiring cheaper labor. As for ' ' the struggles for politi- 
cal freedom," it is gratifying to find that the author of The 
Sins of Legislators, and The Gt'eat Political Super stitio7i, 
considers them a sign of progress, and that, bitter though 
his opposition to trades unions is, he nevertheless takes the 
same view of "the contests between labor and capital." 

It has been shown that during evolution there has been 
going on a conciliation between the interests of the species, 
the interests of the parents and the interests of the offspring, 
egoistic satisfactions becoming more and more dependent 
upon altruistic activities. As the constant presence of pain 
gradually produces callousness, so with increase of pleasures 
sympathy grows : a truth that introduces us to the first 
necessary implication, which is that under the militant type 
of social organization sympathy cannot develop to any 
considerable hight. "The destructive activities carried 
on against external enemies sear it ; the state of feeling 
maintained causes within the society itself frequent acts of 
ggression or cruelty; and further, the compulsory cooper- 
;.tion characterizing the militant regime necessarily represses 
sympathy — exists only on condition of an unsympathetic 
treatment of some by others." But Mr. Spencer concludes 
that even if the militant regime were forthwith to cease, the 



142 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER, 

hinderances to development of sympathy would still be 
great. The predatory nature would continue long after 
the predatory activities had ended, and the ill-adjustment 
of the human constitution to the pursuits of industrial hfe 
must persist for innumerable generations. "Nor would 
even complete adaptation, if limited to disappearance of the 
non-adaptations just indicated, remove all sources of those 
miseries which, to the extent of their manifestation, check 
the growth of sympathy. For while the rate of multiplica- 
tion continues so to exceed the rate of mortality as to cause 
pressure on the means of subsistence, there must continue 
to result much unhappiness, either from balked affections or 
from overwork and stinted means. Only as fast as fertility 
diminishes, which we have seen it must do along with fur- 
ther mental development {Prmciples of Biology, §§ 367- 
377), can there go on such diminution of the labors required 
for efficiently supporting self and family that they will not 
constitute a displeasurable tax on the energies." 

' ' That unceasing social discipline will so mold human 
nature that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spon- 
taneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to 
each and all," Mr. Spencer does not doubt. He foresees 
the time when "the relation at present familiar to us will be 
inverted, and instead of each maintaining his own claims, 
others will maintain his claims for him — not, indeed, by 
active efforts, which will be needless, but by passively 
resisting any undue yielding up of them. There is nothing 
in such behavior which is not even now to be traced in our 
daily experiences as beginning. In business transactions 
among honorable men, there is usually a desire on either 
side that the other shall treat himself fairly. Not unfre- 
quently there is a refwsal to take something regarded as the 



STRIKING THE BALANCE. 



143 



other's due, but which the other offers to give up. In 
social intercourse, too, the cases are common in which 
those who would surrender shares of pleasure are not 
permitted by the rest to do so. Further development of 
sympathy cannot but make this mode of behaving in- 
creasingly general and increasingly genuine." Side by 
side with a healthy egoism which restrains the individual 
from imposing self-sacrifice on others will flourish an 
altruism which, in Mr. Spencer's judgment, will have three 
spheres, viz. : the care for children, the care for parents 
and the care for social welfare ; the sympathy which the 
last named involves increasing as pleasure predominates 
with the removal of human suffering, and participation in 
others' consciousness becoming a gain of pleasure to all. 
The chapter closes with a passage which it would be 
sacrilege to attempt to abbreviate. 

"As," he says, "at an earlier stage, egoistic com- 
petition, first reaching a compromise such that each claims 
no more than his equitable share, afterward rises to a 
conciliation such that each insists on the taking of equitable 
shares by others ; so, at the latest stage, altruistic com- 
petition, first reaching a compromise under which each 
restrains himself from taking an undue share of altruistic 
satisfactions, eventually rises to a conciliation under which 
each takes care that others shall have their opportunities 
for altruistic satisfactions — the highest altruism being that 
which ministers not to the egoistic satisfactions of others 
only, but also to their altruistic satisfactions. 

' ' Far off as seems such a state, yet every one of the 
factors counted on to produce it may already be traced in 
operation among those of highest natures. What now in 
them is occasional and feeble, may be expected with 
further evolution to become habitual and strong; and 



144 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

what now characterizes the exceptionally high may be 
expected eventually to characterize all. For that which 
the best human nature is capable of is within the reach of 
human nature at large. 

' ' That these conclusions will meet with any consider- 
able acceptance is improbable. Neither with current ideas 
nor with current sentiments are they sufficiently congruous. 

"Such a view will not be agreeable to those who 
lament the spreading disbelief in eternal damnation ; nor 
to those who follow the apostle of brute force in thinking 
that because the rule of the strong hand was once good it 
is good for all time ; nor to those whose reverence for One 
who told them to put up the sword is shown by using the 
sword to spread his doctrine among heathens. The con- 
ception set forth would be received with contempt by that 
Fifeshire regiment of militia, of whom eight hundred, at the 
time of the Franco-German war, asked to be employed on 
foreign service, and left the government to say on which 
side they should fight. From the ten thousand priests of 
the religion of love, who are silent when the nation is 
moved by the religion of hate, will come no sign of assent, 
nor from their bishops who, far from urging the extreme 
precept of the Master they gretend to follow, to turn the 
other cheek when one is smitten, vote for acting on the 
principle, strike lest ye be struck. Nor will any approval 
be felt by legislators who, after praying to be forgiven 
their trespasses as they forgive the trespasses of others, 
forthwith decide to attack those who have not trespassed 
against them, and who, after a queen's speech has invoked 
"the blessing of Almighty God" on their councils, 
immediately provide means for committing political 
burglary. 

' ' But though men who profess Christianity and 



STRIKING THE BALANCE. 



145 



practice Paganism can feel no sympathy with such a view, 
there are some, classed as antagonists to the current creed, 
who may not think it absurd to believe that a rationalized 
version of its ethical principles will eventually be acted 
upon." 

It is not the Socialist who will quarrel with these 
sentiments. In this morning's paper — ^June 8th, 1891 — side 
by side with the information that a German soldier has 
been sentenced to five years imprisonment for singing in 
barracks "A free man am I," we read that the German 
Emperor has delivered another of his "characteristic" 
speeches, in the course of which he said : "I warn you, 
who are mostly young countrymen, against the Social 
Democrats. Always remember, the oath you have taken 
binds, you to me. The Bible says the girl who marries 
leaves father and mother and follows her husband. I say 
to you, having taken the oath of soldier, follow me 
implicity, shooting even father or brother without 
question or hesitation, when ordered." But these things 
are not to be cured by lofty sentiments, any more than the 
starving victims of the British civil war of capitalism were 
cured by John Bright' s eloquent appeals to the goddess of 
peace. Everywhere to-day the sword is merely the adjunct 
of the money-bag, from which it derives the sinews 
of war, and to the defense of which it is everywhere 
pledged. And everywhere it still is so because still the 
people, as a whole, believe in the sacredness of property 
which they created but others enjoy ; just as formerly they 
believed in the sanctity of the medicine-man, and as a 
happily diminishing minority yet believes in the right 
divine of kings. That these which all intelligent men now 
look upon as the grossest of superstitions, were able to 



146 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

endure for ages is easily understood, when we consider 
that they had the sanction of what the thought of the 
times universally regarded as commands direct from 
heaven. The capitalist's profits, aad the landlord's tribute, 
have practically to-day no such buttress ; they stand upon 
a utilitarian basis, and are defended from that standpoint by 
their professional advocates. From behind utilitarianism as 
their only rampart they have to face the rising anger of the 
crowd that points to the swelling record of murder, suicide, 
insanity, wretchedness and want, asking persistently why, 
in the face of productive powers that advance by leaps and 
bounds, such things should be. They have to answer the 
question kept standing in the columns of the leading 
English Socialist paper, Justice, viz.: "Is there one 
single useful or necessary duty performed by the capitalist 
to-day which the people organized could not perform 
better for themselves?" 



EXFOLIA TION. 



147 



CHAPTER Vni. 
EXFOLIATION. 

I HAVE said that Mr. Spencer is himself a Hving illustra- 
tion of one of the great truths he has made it his life- 
task to expound ; that, brought early under the influence 
of that laissez /aire philosophy which the English thought 
of the day regarded as irrefutable, he has never been able 
to shake off the influence of his first environment. That 
he has illuminated niost strikingly one side of evolution we 
all acknowledge, but that he has been proportionately 
blind to another side there is also good reason to suppose. 
As this, in my judgment, is closely connected with and 
colors all his economic thought ; and as, moreover, the 
matter, though of the first importance, is still comparatively 
obscure, I have devoted a chapter to its consideration. I 
allude to what Mr. Spencer himself describes as his "faith 
in the essential beneficence of things." The thought is 
expressed— although, as it appears to me, in somewhat 
hesitating language — in the following quotation from the 
closing chapter of his essay upon Progress: its law afid 
cause. There he says : "That long fit of indignation which 
seizes all generous natures when in youth they begin con- 
templating human affairs, having fairly spent itself, there 
slowly grows up a perception that the institutions, beliefs, 
and forms so vehemently condemned are not wholly bad. 
This reaction runs to various lengths. In some, merely to 
a comparative contentment with the arrangements under 
which they live. In others to a recognition of the fitness 



148 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

that exists between each people and its government, 
tyrannical as that may be. In some, again, to the convic- 
tion that, hateful though it is to us, and injurious as it 
would be now, slavery was once beneficial — was one of the 
necessary phases of human progress. Again, in others, to 
the suspicion that great benefit has indirectly arisen from 
the perpetual warfare of past times ; insuring as this did 
the spread of the strongest races, and so providing good 
raw material for civilization. And in a io.'iN this reaction 
ends in the generalization that all modes of human thought 
and action subserve, in the times and places in which they 
occur, some useful function : that though bad in the 
abstract, they are relatively good — are the best which the 
then existing conditions admit of" 

This thought is a favorite one with Individualists of the 
Robert G. Ingersoll stamp : but, on the other hand, it has 
been vigorously opposed by Professor Huxley, who tells us 
that of one thing w-e may be sure, viz., that we have a will, 
and that that will counts for something. I conceive that it 
is this fundamental difference of thought that has been 
slowly drawing Prof Huxley into the opposite camp, and 
has led to his comparatively recent attack, in Administrative 
Nihilism, upon Herbert Spencer. 

I propose now to consider another side of the theory of 
evolution ; one in which the human will, though not the 
sole factor, is one of paramount importance. Mr. Edward 
Carpenter,* a well-known and most charming Socialist 
writer, has apparently made this branch of the subject a 
special study. In an essay entitled Exfoliation he expresses 
himself thus upon the recent tendencies of scientific 

See Civilization: its Cause and Cure, Humboldt Library, 
No. 144. 



EXFOLIA TION. 



149 



thought. "Sometimes we are idealists, sometimes we are 
materialists ; sometimes we believe in mechanics, some- 
times in human or spiritual forces. The science of the last 
fifty years has, as pointed out in a preceding paper, looked 
at things more from the mechanical than the distinctively 
human side — from the point of view of the non-ego rather 
than of the ego. Re-acting from an extreme tendency 
toward a subjective view of phenomena, which characterized 
the older speculations, and fearing to be swayed by a kind 
of partiality toward himself, the modern scientist has 
endeavored to remove the human and conscious element 
from his observations of Nature. And he has done 
valuable work in this way — but, of course, has been 
betrayed into a corresponding narrowness. In fact, the 
main scientific doctrine of the day, Evolution, is obviously 
suffering from this treatment." He submits, therefore, that 
"no man is modified by external conditions alone, without 
any play or re-action of inner needs and desires and 
growth from within ; nor is any man transformed in 
obedience to an inner expansion without sundry lets and 
hindrances from without. The two forces are in constant 
play upon one another; but in some ways that would 
appear to be the more important which proceeds from the 
man (or creature) himself, since this is obviously vital and 
organic to him, and, therefore, the most consistent and 
reliable factor in his modification; while the external 
force — arising from various and remote causes — must rather 
be regarded as discontinuous and accidental." He further 
^tells us that "on the theory of Exfoliation, which was 
practically Lamarck's theory, there is a force at work 
throughout creation, ever urging each type onward into 
new and newer forms. This force appears first in con- 
gqiousness in the form of desire. Within each shape of life 



I50 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



sleep wants without number, from the lowest and simplest 
to the most complex and ideal. As each new desire or 
ideal is evolved, it brings the creature into conflict with its 
surroundings, then, gaining its satisfaction, externalizes 
itself in the structure of the creature, and leaves the way 
open for the birth of a new ideal. If, then, we would find a 
key to the understanding of the expansion and growth of 
all animate creation, such a key may exist in the nature of 
desire itself and the comprehension of its real meaning." 

He points out that, while this does not preclude the 
action of external conditions, or imply that organization is 
determined by desire alone, it is nevertheless very different 
from the ' ' Survival of the Fittest ' ' of the Darwinian evolu- 
tion theory. "We may fairly suppose," he says, "that 
both kinds of modification take place ; but the latter is a sort 
of easy success won by an external accident of birth — a 
success of the kind that would readily be lost again ; while 
the former is the up-hill fight of a nature that has grown 
inwardly, and wins expression for itself in spite of external 
obstacles — an expression which, therefore, is likely to be 
permanent." Furthermore, carrying the thought into the 
broad field of human action, and applying it to historic 
cases, he remarks, with a becoming hesitancy: "It has 
been frequently said that great material changes are suc- 
ceeded by intellectual, and finally by moral, revolutions — ■ 
as the conquests of Alexander passed on into the literary 
expansion of the Alexandrian Schools, and thence into the 
establishment of Christianity, or as the mechanical develop- 
ments of our own time have been followed by immense 
literary and scientific activities, and are obviously passing 
over now into a great social regeneration ; but a reconsid- 
enition of the matter might, I take it, lead us not so much 
to look on the later changes as caused by the earlier, as to 



EXFOLIATION. 



151 



look on the earlier as the indications and first outward and 
visible signs of the coming of the later. When a man feels 
in himself the upheaval of a new moral fact, he sees plainly- 
enough that that fact cannot come into the actual world all 
at once — not without first a destruction of the existing order 
of society — such a destruction as makes him feel satanic ; 
then an intellectual revolution ; and lastly only, a new order 
embodying the new impulse. When this new impulse has 
thoroughly materialized itself, then, after a time, will come 
another inward birth, and similar changes will be passed 
through again. So it might be said that the work of each 
age is not to build on the past, but to rise out of the past 
and throw it off; only, of course, in such matters where all 
forms of thought are inadequate, it is hard to say that one 
way of looking at the subject is truer than another. As 
before, we should endeavor to look at the thing from 
different sides." 

Now I am aware that many of my readers will have 
been long since growing impatient, and saying to them- 
selves : "This fellow persistently evades the point, which 
is — not whether our thoughts help, but whether we can 
help our thoughts." This is indeed a very bottom ques- 
tion which has perplexed a long line of diligent philosophers, 
and seems to me, at present, entirely incapable of actual 
proof Yet it is very clear, to me at least, that there is a 
vast difference between a Carlyle, with his strong convic- 
tion of the ability of the hero to triumph over circumstances, 
and a Herbert Spencer, with his inclination to look at men 
as drift, floating helplessly on a sea of matter. And I am 
equally convinced that it makes an immense difference to 
every movement whether it is composed of men who, like 
Kropotkin, are saturated with the thought of the "Power 
of the Minority;" or of philosophical phlegmatists who 



152 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



have thought themselves into the conviction that they can 
neither help nor hinder, and that events must develop of 
themselves. Which, as a matter of fact, they never do. 

These classes, with one or other of which most thinkers 
have allied themselves, represent the opposite poles of 
thought. The one is the philosophic Buddhist whose 
creed is non-resistance ; the other the church militant of 
Christ armed cap-a-pie for the crusade. Develop unduly 
the thought of the omnipotence of the environment and 
you have a Herbert Spencer, so conscious of the helpless- 
ness, or hurtfulness, of interference that every effort at" 
collective activity draws from him a never-failing cry of 
alarm. In this morning's paper — ^June 9th, 1891 — I read 
his letter to the St. James' Gazette, from which, as his latest 
utterance, I extract. ' ' Respecting the Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Children," he says, "the ques- 
tion is : Will it work toward the enforcing of parental 
responsibilities or toward the undermining of them? To 
bring punishment on brutal and negligent parents seems, 
on the whole, a beneficial function : for though, by pro- 
tecting the children of bad parents (who are on the average 
of cases themselves bad) there is some interference with 
the survival of the fittest, yet it is a defensible conclusion 
that in the social state philanthropic feeling may, to this 
extent, mitigate the rigor of natural law. But if, instead 
of enforcing parental responsibilities, there is any under- 
taking of them, as in some cases there seems to have been, 
mischief will result. Or, if the action of the society is 
carried too far, parents may be debarred by fear from using 
fit discipline : an evil which is said to have already arisen. 
Or if, again, in the same way that voluntary education has 
grown into State education, this voluntary society should 
become a branch of police, then there will result a system 



EXFOLIA TION. 



153 



like that which existed among the ancient Peruvians, who 
had officers to inspect households and see that the children 
were properly managed. Unfortunately, very innocent- 
looking germs are apt to develop into structures which are 
anything but innocent ; and, as I have already said, it will 
require great and constant care to prevent such a result in 
the present case." What one likes about Mr. Spencer is 
his definiteness ; one knows exactly where to find him. 
Since the unfortunate fatix pas in Social Statics, wherein it 
was suggested that the community might take possession 
of and manage its landed estate, there has been no further 
straying from the straight and narrow individualistic path. 
The horizon of social activities is still measured by the 
sweep of the policeman's club. 

On the other hand, develop unduly the thought that 
circumstances are but putty in the hands of the really able 
man, and you have a Thomas Carlyle, whose hero-worship 
finally carries him to a scorn of democracy. But, by the 
very fact that he is to some extent a Don Quixote tilting at 
the windmill, you also have a man who actually accom- 
plishes much in the alteration of things ; of whom it has been 
fitly said that he was "the great unmasker,"* and that 
"the first man who really made a dint in the Individualist 
shield was Carlyle, who knew how to compel men to listen 
to him."t 

It is curious, therefore, to observe how closely these two, 
who seemed so far apart, approached each other. For 
Carlyle' s growing adoration of strength brought him finally 
to the frame of mind in which God appeared to be always 
on the side of the heaviest battalions ; and Herbert Spencer 

* Socialism and Unsocialism of Thomas Carlyle, p. x. Social 
Science Library, No. 3. Humboldt Publishing Co. 

t Fabian Essays, p. 23. Social Science Library, No. 6. 



154 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



is the worshiper of the force, working through the "sur- 
vival of the fittest" — the latter assisted by a drastic criminal 
code, sugar-coa;ted with many sage reflections as to the 
necessity of conserving vested rights. Such an individual- 
ism is intolerable to an honest mind ; being, indeed, precisely 
one of those shams which it was Carlyle's special pleasure 
to unmask. 

It may be granted, doubtless, that we both act and are 
acted on ; mold and are molded : Nature, of which we are 
a part, being here, as elsewhere, bi-sexual and working 
through a two-fold force. It will probably be further 
granted that, as we see the least developed organisms the 
almost helpless prey of circumstances, so, as we rise in the 
scale, we mark a continual increase of power over the 
environment, which power attains its greatest development 
in the most completely developed man. In preceding 
chapters I have given repeated prominence to the Social- 
istic thought that it is the economic mold that gives all 
other institutions their shape, the bread and butter question 
being the foundation upon which all our social institutions 
rest. So it has been unquestionably in the past with prim- 
itive and comparatively helpless people ; so it is still with 
the masses, who are well-nigh as helpless as ever ; but so 
it is not with those among us whose bread and butter is 
secure, and so it will not be with the society of the future. 
Meanwhile it seems to me a most decided flaw in the phil- 
osophy of Herbert Spencer that, trained in the earlier school 
of evolutionists, he still continues to count the environment 
as well-nigh omnipotent. For him, therefore, naturally and 
inevitably, history is a slow and weary process that * ' creeps 
in its petty pace from day to day," and he pays too little 
attention to the sudden transformations it records. Con- 
centrating his attention on the length of the period of 



EXFOLIA TION. 



155 



gestation, he neglects to mark the rapidity of birth. He 
belongs to those who cite the French Revolution as illus- 
trative of the fact that human nature remained unchanged, 
but forgets to tell us that a colossal system which had stood 
for centuries fell almost at a blow. His philosophy explains 
the tenacity with which he still clings to laissez faire. 



PART III. 

CHAPTER I. 
THE COMING SLAVERY. 

IN the preceding pages we have followed Mr. Spencer 
from the time when, in 1842, he first came before the 
public as the exponent of the constant evolutionary 
"tendency of social arrangements of themselves to assume 
a condition oi stable equilibrium;" as the opponent of State 
control; as the advocate of "the limitation of State action 
to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens." 
We have seen him appear in 1850 as the advocate of State- 
ownership of land, a doctrine upon which, as we have 
also seen, he has since maintained a most significant silence. 
We have followed him through an elaborate exposition of 
the laws of life as affecting the development of the individ- 
ual and the race ; and, if I have expressed myself with any 
approach to clearness, we have also seen that the altruistic 
conditions, on the observance of which the very existence 
both of the individual and of the social ego depends, are 
systematically violated, necessarily violated, and, as it would 
seem, increasingly violated by our methods of production 
and exchange. We have also seen how Socialism, thanks 
to its absorption of the teachings of Evolution, has advanced 
from the static condition of an idealism that constructed 



158 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

Utopias mainly with the guidance of the intuitions, to the 
dynamic condition of a science that places itself squarely in 
line with the most advanced thought of the age, and con- 
ceives the social organism as being, equally with the indi- 
vidual organism, subject to the law of growth. Had I 
found a convenient place for its insertion I might have 
shown how, as early as 1847, ^^'^'l Marx and Frederick 
Engels in their celebrated Commtinistic Majiifesto were 
able to point out, by a strictly evolutionary analysis, both 
the course that capitalistic production must of necessity 
take, and the development of a gigantic class struggle 
between monopolists and proletariat, profoundly affecting 
all social institutions. I might have shown how they 
anticipated the rings and trusts, which have apparently 
taken our enlightened legislators so entirely by surprise, 
together with many other recent economic changes. 

We now come to the date when Mr. Spencer awoke 
to the fact that Socialism, instead of being the fancy scheme 
dismissed in 1850 with a casual paragraph, was a steady 
stream of tendencies ; and that these tendencies were bring- 
ing about social changes entirely different from those which 
he himself had contemplated. In 1884 he accordingly 
entered the lists against Socialism, striking the first blow 
in The Coming Slavery. We shall find him still the uncom- 
promising advocate of laissezfaire, although, as has been 
well said, it was then generally admitted that there was no 
escaping "the lesson of the century, taught alike by the 
economists, the statesmen, and the 'practical men,' that 
complete individual liberty, with unrestrained private own- 
ership of the instruments of wealth production, is irrecon- 
cilable with the common weal." I fear that my readers 
will discover that Mr. Spencer has nothing new to say upon 
the question, although the striking economic developments 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 



159 



of the preceding years had practically remolded English 
thought, constituting, as they do, a gigantic menace which 
even the most optimistic politician has found it impossible 
to ignore. On the other hand, the essays that will be now 
examined afford a most interesting study, as showing the 
tenacity with which a man who has built up his reputation 
as the exponent of a particular idea, will cling to that idea 
long after it has been proved, both inductively and deduct- 
ively, to be unworkable. 

We shall find no more advocacy of State-ownership of 
land : we shall find a rigid insistence upon the right and 
necessity of individual struggle ; and we shall find the 
existing individual struggle defended as a 7'egime of indus- 
trial wiUinghood. This assumption that the inequalities by 
virtue of which one gets ninety cents a day for mining coal, 
while another has accumulated in a few short years two 
hundred million dollars arise from agreements willingly 
entered into : this assumption that the purchase of labor 
by.xapital is accomplished by contracts free from all taint 
of coercion, and entered into by mutually contracting 
parties, each of whom was a free and equal agent — this 
assumption is the major premise that underhes the whole 
argument. Overthrow it by proving that upon either side 
there was compulsion ; show that the position of one of the 
contracting parties was such as to constitute that dutrss 
which every civilized code of laws regards as vitiating all 
contracts into which it may enter, and the whole super- 
structure of argument built upon this premise falls irrep- 
arably to pieces. Aware of this, Mr. Spencer assumes 
throughout the equality and liberty of the contracting 
parties with a placidity unparalleled, as I conceive, in the 
whole range of philosophic literature. 

In The Coming Slavery he plunges at once in medias 



i6o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

res by reminding us that sympathy is wont to ideahze its 
object. Speaking of the unhappy conditions of immense 
masses in London he tells us that "they are thought of as 
the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought 
of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of 
the undeserving poor." He tells us that the trouble is, 
not that they have no work, but that "they either refuse 
work or quickly turn themselves out of it ; " that it is 
natural that they should bring unhappiness on themselves 
and those connected with them, and that to attempt to save 
them from the penalties of dissolute living is to fight against 
the constitution of things, and eventually inflict far more 
pain. He then reminds us that "the command 'if any 
would not work neither should he eat ' is simply a Christian 
enunciation of that universal law of Nature under which 
life has reached its present hight — the law that a creature 
not energetic enough to maintain itself must die." This 
particular point I have already spoken of when treating the 
question of parasites in Chapter V., Part II. That the main 
success of our social evolution up to date has been the 
creation of a continually increasing swarm of parasites is 
to-day a patent fact. 

Mr. Spencer then passes to a consideration of the 
method in which the admitted evil of pauperism is being 
treated, and, to clear the ground, he gives an anecdote of 
the difficulties met by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, 
when he attempted to put the Poor Law of 1833 into force. 

' ' Almost universal opposition was encountered by him : 
not the poor only being his opponents, but even the 
farmers on whom came the burden of heavy poor-rates. 
For, strange to say, their interests had become apparently 
identified with the maintenance of this system which taxed 



THE COMING SLAVERY. i6i 

them so largely. The explanation is that there had grown 
up the practice of paying out of the rates a part of the 
wages of each farm-servant — 'make-wages,' as the sum 
was called. And though the farmers contributed most of 
the fund from which ' make-wages ' were paid, yet, since 
all other rate-payers contributed, the farmers seemed to 
gain by the arrangement. " . . . . " Under another 
form, and in a different sphere, we are now yearly extend- 
ing a system which is identical in nature with the system of 
' make-wages ' under the old Poor Law. Little as poli- 
ticians recognize the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable 
that these various public appliances for working-class 
comfort, which they are supplying at the cost of rate- 
payers, are intrinsically of the same nature as those which, 
in past times, treated the farmer's man as half-laborer and 
half-pauper. In either case the worker receives in return 
for what he does, money wherewith to buy certain of the 
things he wants ; while, to procure the rest of them for 
him, money is furnished out of a common fund raised by 
taxes. What matters it whether the things supplied by 
rate-payers for nothing, instead of by the employer in pay- 
ment, are of this kind or that kind ? the principle is the 
same. For sums received let us substitute the commodities 
and benefits purchased, and then see how the matter 
stands. In old Poor Law times the farmer gave for work 
done the equivalent, say, of house-rent, bread, clothes and 
fire ; while the rate-payers practically supplied the man 
and his family with their shoes, tea, sugar, candles, a little 
bacon, etc. The division is, of course, arbitrary ; but 
unquestionably the farmer and the rate-payers furnished 
these things between them. At the present time the artisan 
receives from his employer in wages the equivalent of the 
consumable commodities he wants, while from the public 



1 62 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

comes satisfaction for others of his needs and desires. 
The two are pervaded by substantially the 
same illusion. In the one case as in the other, what looks 
like a gratis benefit is not a gratis benefit. The amount 
which, under the old Poor Law, the half-pauperized laborer 
received from the parish to eke out his weekly income, was 
not really, as it appeared, a bonus ; for it was accompanied 
by a substantially-equivalent decrease of his wages, as was 
quickly proved when the system was abolished and the 
wages rose. Just so is it with these seeming boons 
received by working people in towns. I do not refer only 
to the fact that they unawares pay in part through the 
raised rents of their dwellings (when they are not actual 
rate-payers) ; but I refer to the fact that the wages 
received by them are, like the wages of the farm -laborer, 
diminished by these public burdens falling on employers. 
If the employer has to pay this (increased 
rates, caused by improvements in the interest of labor), not 
on his private dwelling only, but on his business-premises, 
factories, warehouses, or the like ; it results that the 
interest on his capital must be diminished by that amount, 
or the amount must be taken from the wages-fund, or 
partly one and partly the other." 

The last sentence has special interest as showing that 
Mr. Spencer is still a believer in the "wage-fund" theory, 
a theory admitted by John Stuart Mill years before his death 
to be indefensible, and now generally discarded by econ- 
omists. The whole argument, however, which I have 
already in part anticipated, is noteworthy as being an 
indorsement of that perpetually used by Socialists, it being 
one of the cardinal principles of their economy that to 
enrich the proletariat in one direction is necessarily to 
subject them to attempts at further robbery in another, so 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 163 

long as the present wage-system endures. They, there- 
fore, place the total abolition of the wage-system as their 
constant aim. As further elucidating a point I have dealt 
with in Part I., I quote from Capital and Land, issued by 
the Fabian Society: — "How far would land restoration 
alone remedy this ? If it were possible to nationalize soil 
apart from capital, the ground rents recovered for the nation 
might possibly amount to the present sum of our imperial 
and local taxation, ^135,000,000, or thereabouts. The 
pecuniary relief certainly could not amount to more. 
Land nationalization would further immensely benefit 
society, where it now suffers from the curmudgeonism of 
private owners. But so long as capital continued to be 
used for the exploitation of the workers, so long would their 
economic slavery continue. Those who retain the capital 
without which the earth and all its products cannot be 
worked, will step into the place of the landlord, and the 
tribute of ' interest ' will be augmented. ' ' 

Similarly the London Coimnonweal, organ of the Social- 
ist League, has been at the pains to demonstrate, in a series 
of exhaustive articles, that the advantages gained in various 
countries by the workers through Factory Acts, statutes 
limiting the hours of labor, and so forth, have been counter- 
balanced by other exactions which have been rendered 
possible by such legislation. All which, indeed, logically 
follows if the "Iron Law of Wages," first enunciated in 
scientific form by Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, and 
accepted by all Socialists as axiomatic, is correct. That 
law declares simply that, with the means of production and 
distribution monopolized, competition among the workers 
keeps the average wage steadily at the point at which the 
workers can subsist and propagate their species. If, there- 
fore, rents are high, railroad fares extortionate, and other 



1 64 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

necessaries of life dear, the worker will necessarily receive 
what appears to be, m money, an excessive wage : if, on 
the other hand, through nationalization of land, rent should 
disappear ; if, through the municipalization of railroads, 
transit should be gratuitous ; and if, through the intro- 
duction of free trade, provisions and clothing should be 
cheapened indefinitely, then, as the net result of all these 
reforms — which, taken separately, appear so desirable — 
wages would fall to a merely nominal figure, since the 
masses would still remain dependent upon the capitalists 
for opportunity to work, and would be still forced to accept 
as wage a bare subsistence. To understand this is to under- 
stand the inexorable logic by which Socialists find them- 
selves forced to regard all effort for a mere amelioration of 
the wage system as being, so far as direct results are con- 
cerned, itself, a useless expenditure of time and effort ; and 
it will be seen that upon this point they and Mr. Spencer 
are in substantial accord. 

So far with regard to direct results. It is, however, 
the indirect result that attracts the attention of both the 
Socialists and Mr. Spencer ; the former regarding all 
attempts on the part of the masses to lighten the yoke of 
their employers, and every victory won, as rendering easier 
the final effort by which they will discard it altogether ; the 
latter seeing plainly that every successful interference by 
the people with private management carries us a step fur- 
ther from that individualism which he considers the basis 
of all progress. To both it is very clear that the philos- 
ophy of laissez /aire is the only foundation upon which 
private property in the means of production and distribu- 
tion can rest securely, and that to attack the foundation is 
to threaten the stability of the whole institution. All which 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 165 

the employers in their daily conflict with labor instinctively 
comprehend, though probably not one in a hundred of 
them has any substantial knowledge of Mr. Spencer's 
works. As I write this the papers tell us that the so-called 
clothing manufacturers* of Rochester, N. Y. , have issued 
their ultimatum in the contest between themselves and the 
men who are the actual manufacturers. "It is no longer 
a question of wages," they say: "it is a question of per- 
sonal liberty : whether we shall be permitted to run our 
own factories as we see fit, employing whom we choose 
upon such terms as seem to us desirable." 

We now come to some severe criticisms of the practical, 
rule-of-thumb politician who "contemplates intently the 
things his act will achieve, but thinks little of the remoter 
issues of the movement his act sets up, and still less of its 
collateral issues ; ' ' who never stops to ask himself the one 
important question of questions — "What type of social 
structure am I tending to produce ? " To which complaint, 
all Socialists would reply that politicians have their trade 
like other men, and that, if Mr. Spencer would have them 
prefer the social welfare to their own interest, he should 
join hands with the Socialists in their endeavor to bring 
about a re-organization of society that would make private 
and public interests synonymous terms. At present the 
conflict of private interests is apparently even less con- 
ducive to harmony and public spirit in politics than in any 
other field, and the one blunder that is considered worse 
than any crime is the "getting left." 

Of the extent to which modern legislation has already 
sapped, and threatens to sap yet more the foundations of 

*Of course the men who actually make the clothes are the 
real manufacturers. 



1 66 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

laissez faire, numerous instances are cited. I select a few 
of the most forcible ; such as have been brought most con- 
spicuously before the public, and have received already 
much attention. Mr. Spencer tells us that those who in 
1834 passed an act regulating the labor of women and 
children in certain factories never anticipated "that the 
inspection provided would grow to the extent of requir- 
ing that before a * young person ' is employed in a factory, 
authority must be given by a certifying surgeon, who, by 
personal examination (to which no limit is placed) has satis- 
fied himself that there is no incapacitating disease or bodily 
infirmity ; his verdict determining whether the ' young 
person ' shall earn wages or not. " As to which it may be 
remarked that the factory act in question was passed in 
the teeth of the wealthy classes who had at that time a 
monopoly of the House of Commons, and was passed more- 
over, at a time when the doctrine of laissez faire was at the 
zenith of its power, millions of Englishmen honestly believ- 
ing that to interfere with the manufacturer's freedom to 
employ whom he chose, upon the crudest terms that 
necessity might dictate, was to write the doom of England's 
industrial supremacy. It was forced by the exhibit of an 
enormous mass of evidence showing conclusively that, in 
their greed for the markets of the world, the factory lords 
of the North of England had robbed the cradle, and hurried 
their unhappy fellow-countrymen to premature pauper 
graves, with a callous impartiality that a Caligula might 
have envied. As for the medical precautions now found 
necessary, they are the inevitable concomitant of an indus- 
trial system that has culminated in the grouping of a 
thousand operatives under a single roof 

That there may be a clear understanding of th^ lengths 
to which laissez faire can carry its advocates, I take the 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 167 

following from Mr. Sidney Webb in the Fabian Essays : — 

' ' Mr. Herbert Spencer and those who agree in his worship 
of Individualism, apparently desire to bring back the legal 
position which made possible the 'white slavery' of which 
the ' sins of legislators ' have deprived us ; but no serious 
attempt has ever been made to get repealed any one of the 
Factory Acts. Women working half naked in the coal 
mines ; young children dragging trucks all day in the foul 
atmosphere of the underground galleries ; infants bound to 
the loom for fifteen hours in the heated air of the cotton 
mill, and kept awake only by the overlooker's lash ; hours 
of labor for all, young and old, limited only by the utmost 
capabihties of physical endurance ; complete absence of the 
sanitary provisions necessary to a rapidly growing popula- 
tion : these and other nameless iniquities will be found 
recorded as the results of freedom of contract and complete 
laissez /aire in the impartial pages of successive blue-book 
reports. But the Liberal mill- owners of the day, aided by 
some of the political economists, stubbornly resisted every 
attempt to interfere with their freedom to use ' their ' capital 
and 'their '.hands as they found most profitable, and (like 
their successors to-day) predicted of each restriction as it 
arrived that it must inevitably destroy the export trade and 
deprive them of all profit whatsoever." To which he 
adds this note : — "It is sometimes asserted nowadays that 
the current descriptions of factory life under the regime of 
freedom of contract are much exaggerated. This is not 
the case. The horrors revealed in the reports of official 
inquiries even exceed those commonly quoted. For a full 
account of the legislation, and the facts on which it was 
founded, see Von Plener's 'English Factory Legislation.' 
The chief official reports are those of the House of Com- 



1 68 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

mons Committee of 1815-6, House of Lords Committee, 
18 1 9, and Royal Commission, 1840. Marx {Capital^ 
gives many other references. See also F. Engels, Condition 
of the English Working- Classes.'" 

It seems to me advisable to add here yet another note. 
There are Anarchists who consistently oppose all Factory 
Acts, all limiting of the hours of labor, all efforts to mitigate 
the ferocity of laissez /aire. They have at least candor on 
their side. They do not pretend that present arrangements 
are just, as springing from free and voluntary contract. 
On the contrary they maintain that they are merely the 
humiliating terms imposed by conquering capital upon its 
victims. They urge that the whole system is so radically 
unjust that it must tumble all together, annihilated by a 
single blow. They, therefore, deprecate all measures which, 
by giving temporary relief, tend to delay the blow. Mr. 
Bernard Shaw has expressed my own view of the situation 
so admirably in the Fabian Essays that I do not hesitate to 
steal again from him. The following is from the close of 
his essay on "Transition :" a paper originally read before 
the Economic Section of the British Association at Bath, 
7th September, 1888. He says : — "Let me, in conclusion, 
disavow all admiration for this inevitable, but sordid, slow, 
reluctant, cowardly path to justice. I venture to claim 
your respect for those enthusiasts who still refuse to believe 
that millions of their fellow creatures must be left to sweat 
and suffer in hopeless toil and degradation, while parlia- 
ments and vestries grudgingly muddle and grope toward 
paltry instalments of betterment. The right is so clear, the 
wrong so intolerable, the gospel so convincing, that it seems 
to them that it must be possible to enlist the whole body 
of workers — soldiers, policemen, and all — under the banner 
of .brotherhood and equality ; and at one great stroke to 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 169 

set Justice on her rightful throne. Unfortunately, such an 
army of light is no more to be gathered from the human 
product of nineteenth century civilization than grapes are 
to be gathered from thistles. But if we feel glad of that 
impossibility ; if we feel relieved that the change is to be 
slow enough to avert personal risk to ourselves ; if we feel 
anything less than acute disappointment and bitter humilia- 
tion at the discovery that there is yet between us and the 
promised land a wilderness in which many must perish 
miserably of want and despair : then I submit to you that 
our institutions have corrupted us to the most dastardly 
degree of selfishness. The Socialists need not be ashamed 
of beginning as they did by proposing militant organization 
of the working classes and general insurrection. The pro- 
posal proved impracticable ; and it has now been aban- 
doned — not without some outspoken regrets — by English 
Socialists. ' ' 

To return to Mr. Spencer's illustrations, the next of 
which is taken from the shipping business. 

' ' Nor, ' ' he says, ' ' did it occur to the ' practical ' poHticians 
who provided a compulsory load-line for merchant vessels, 
that the pressure of ship-owners' interests would habitually 
cause the putting of the load-line at the very highest 
limit, and that from precedent to precedent, tending ever in 
the same direction, the load-line would gradually rise in the 
better class of ships ; as from good authority I learn that it 
has already done." Is it then the taking of a needful 
precaution for the preservation of life that is in fault, or is it 
not rather the "pressure of ship-owners' interests" — their 
readiness to risk the sailor's life for the sake of an extra 
one per cent.? The agitation conducted by Plimsoll for 
the institution of the compulsory load-Hne is still fresh in 



lyo 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



the memory of the EngUsh people ; they remember, with 
remorse, that for years he was left to fight the sailor's 
battle single-handed against the combined influence of the 
ship-owners' ring in Parliament. They remember the long 
indictment that he brought, and they remember that he 
proved it, beyond all possibility of denial, in open court. 
They remember that the indictment was one of murder, 
and of wholesale murder ; the deliberately plotted sacrifice 
of hapless wretches sent to sea in floating coffins that 
insurance might be gathered. And now the argument is 
made by Mr. Spencer that such a measure should never 
have been passed because "the pressure of ship-owners' 
interest ' ' has made it worse than useless ! Is it not 
inevitable that to many minds the suggestion should arise 
that, as between the load-line and the ship-owners' 
interests, it is the latter that should be abolished, and that 
shipping, and those who go to sea in ships, would greatly 
gain thereby? 

In the same vein we are told that "the law-makers 
who provided for the ultimate lapsing of French railways 
to the State, never conceived the possibility that inferior 
traveling facilities would result — did not foresee that 
reluctance to depreciate the value of property eventually 
coming to the State, would negative the authorization of 
competing lines, and that in the absence of competing lines 
locomotion would be relatively costly, slow, and infrequent. ' ' 
The retort just made in the case of the ship-owners 
obviously again holds good, the instance illustrating the 
extent to which, thanks to our superstitious reverence for 
what are regarded as the divine rights of property, we 
permit selfish interests to trample public convenience under 
foot. 

It would be tedious to give in detail the numerous 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 



171 



other instances cited, since they all proceed along the same 
line of thought. It is pointed out that the purchase and 
working of telegraphs by the English government is made 
a reason for urging that it should also buy and work the 
railroads ; that the supplying children with food for their 
minds by public agency has been followed, in some cases, 
by supplying food for their bodies, upon the logical plea 
that good bodies as well as good minds are needful to 
make good citizens ; and that this, in its turn, has been 
followed by the contention that ' ' pleasure, in the sense it is 
now generally admitted, needs legislating for and organizing 
at least as much as work." 

As germane to the subject, and as further proof of the 
correctness of Mr. Spencer's position both as regards the 
socialistic tendencies of modern legislation, and the short- 
sightedness of the "practical" politicians who, under the 
pressure of their constituents, inaugurate it, I quote again 
from Sidney Webb's Socialism in England. "Our 
unconscious acceptance," he says, "of this progressive 
Socialism is a striking testimony to the change which has 
come over the country of Godwin, Malthus and James 
Mill. The 'practical man,' oblivious or contemptuous of 
any theory of the Social Organism or general principles of 
social organization, has been forced by the necessities of the 
time into an ever deepening coUectivist channel. Socialism, 
of course, he still rejects and despises. The Individualist 
City Councilor will walk along the municipal pavement, 
lit by municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms 
with municipal water, and, seeing by the municipal clock in 
the municipal market that he is too early to meet his 
children coming from the municipal school hard by the 
county lunatic asylum and municipal hospital, will use the 
national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through 



172 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



the municipal park but to come by the municipal tramway, 
to meet him in the municipal reading room, by the 
municipal art gallery, museum and library, where he 
intends to consult some of the national publications in 
order to prepare his next speech in the municipal town- 
hall in favor of the nationalization of canals and the increase 
of the government control over the railway system. 
'Socialism, Sir,' he will say, 'don't waste the time of a 
practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, sir, 
individual self-help: that's what's made our city what 
it is.'" 

That this tendency is still more marked in Australia, 
the following quotation from an article by Sir Charles 
Dilke in the June, 1891, Forum, will show. There he 
says : — "The Australians are State Socialists, and although 
their new constitution proposes to recognize the inde- 
pendence of the States in a far higher degree than that in 
which it has been allowed to exist in Canada, yet it vests 
the virtual control of the whole railway system of Australia 
in the federal power, which will be a shock to your Amer- 
ican minds, whether north or south of the Canadian border 
line. . . . The great majority of Australians have confidence 
in the power of the State to do much for the people, and in 
the wisdom of its exercising this power. You in the 
United States, the Canadians across their border, the con- 
tinental governments, are far behind even old England in 
this respect, and it would be of advantage to the world that 
Australia, which is much before us all, should have the 
opportunity of putting its doctrines into practice upon the 
largest scale." 

Our own American cities are rapidly discovering that 
they can themselves manufacture their own gas and elec- 
tricity ; that they can supply themselves with water, and 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 173 

look after the transportation of their inhabitants, far more 
cheaply than the monopolists will do it for them. And this 
is by no means a mere money gain. The notorious cor- 
ruption of our municipal politics is principally traceable to 
the vast interests which private corporations have at stake, 
and these corporations naturally look upon politics as a 
most important department of their business, to be con- 
ducted on strictly business principles. The bribery fund 
has, therefore, come to be regarded as one of the legitimate 
expenses of the business, and I would further point out that 
these corporations are vitally interested in that delightful 
institution, the "political boss." I myself have known 
capitalists, seeking to purchase an electric franchise in a 
new western city, complain bitterly that they had to traffic 
with a dozen city councilmen, whereas, in a more advanced 
community, it would have been sufficient to have "squared" 
a single boss. The elimination of this enormously corrupt- 
ing influence will carry with it consequences the value of 
which it is quite impossible as yet to estimate, for not only 
will it purify, but, by increasing the interest of citizens in 
the management of their own affairs, it will enlarge the 
circle of their activities, and stimulate that public spirit 
which is at present so lethargic. This, obviously, will 
greatly facilitate additional advance.* It is not by acci- 
dent that Massachusetts, which took the lead in the anti- 
slavery agitation, and was the first to protect her helpless 
women and children by passing factory acts, is now the 
first to follow boldly in the lead which England and 
Australia have already set. 

It may be interesting, before bringing this chapter to a 

* See Prof. Richard T. Ely's pamphlet on Natural Monopolies 
and Local Taxation, for a full statement of this question. 



174 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



close, to call attention to the long encyclical letter on ' ' The 
Condition of Labor" which the Pope has just given to the 
world. I certainly do not deem it worth extended notice, 
but the opening paragraph is exceedingly significant. It 
runs : — "It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary 
change, which has so long been predominant in the nations 
of the world, should have passed beyond politics and made 
its influence felt in the cognate field of practical economy. 
The elements of a conflict are unmistakable : the growth 
of industry, and the surprising discoveries of science ; the 
changed relations of masters and workmen ; the enormous 
fortunes of individuals, and the poverty of the masses ; the 
increased self-reliance and the closer mutual combination 
of the working population ; and, finally, a general moral 
deterioration. The momentous seriousness of the present 
state of things just now fills every mind with painful appre- 
hension ; wise men discuss it ; practical men propose 
schemes : popular meetings, legislatures, and sovereign 
princes, all are occupied with it — and there is nothing which 
has a deeper hold on public attention." 

Although his Holiness continues, in a truly Socialistic 
vein, condemning " rapacious usury " — which the Church, as 
a large property holder, practices without remorse — and 
although he dwells with emphasis on the fact that the 
workingman of to-day has "been given over, isolated and 
defenseless, to the callousness of employers and the greed 
of unrestrained competition," this hinders him not a whit 
from condemning such attempts as have been already made 
to substitute cooperation for the regime of usurious compe- 
tition. The following shows his exact position :■-" To 
remedy these evils the Socialists, working on the poor 
man's envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy private 
property, and maintain that individual possessions should 



THE COMING SLAVERY. 1^5 

become the common property of all, to be administered 
by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that, by 
thus transferring property from private persons to the 
community, the present evil state of things will be set to 
rights, because each citizen will then have his equal share 
of whatever there is to enjoy. But their proposals are so 
clearly futile for all practical purposes that if they were 
carried out the workingman himself would be among the 
first to suffer. Moreover they are emphatically unjust, 
because they would rob the lawful possessor, bring the 
State into a sphere that is not its own, and cause complete 
confusion in the community." 

The Socialists' position is, of course, that monopoly of 
the instruments of production and distribution enables a 
small class to levy tribute upon the masses of the people. 
I am here concerned with pointing out that the industrial 
evolution now accomplishing itself in municipal affairs, 
and everywhere proved to be a necessary advance, is the 
very thing that both Herbert Spencer and the Pope object 
to. The extremes have met. 



176 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 

IN this chapter I propose to consider the grounds upon 
which Mr. Spencer bases his opposition to all socialistic 
legislation — legislation that appeals to the average man 
as certainly humane, and usually as an imperative neces- 
sity. The grounds are fourfold. First, and most specious, 
that government interference involves the evil of doing for 
others what it would be far better that they should do for 
themselves. This argument Mr. Spencer, in common with 
all other writers upon evolution, is never too weary to 
reiterate. It is impregnable, since both biology and history 
adduce, as I have previously shown, proofs innumerable of 
the certain decay that falls upon the parasite who permits 
others to do his own struggling for him. But the conten- 
tion of the Socialists is that the argument is not to the 
point ; that it begs the whole question, and starts the dis- 
cussion upon a palpably small premise. Modern Socialism 
— which is essentially evolutionary, and regards the advance 
toward civilization as the steady unfolding of an organism 
-^\s, saturated with this very idea of self-help, and is per- 
petually reminding the working classes that they have to 
help themselves, and to wage their own struggle with every 
weapon at command. It reminds them that, prior to the 
Protestant reformation, they were not permitted to do their 
own thinking for themselves ; that, prior to the American 
and French Revolutions, they were not permitted to do 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 



177 



their own law-making for themselves, and that to-day they 
are not permitted to run their own industries for them- 
selves. For what a heartless satire is that which grants 
permission to every man to start an enterprise, but places 
a valuation upon the tools wherewith it must be conducted 
so high that the ordinary earnings of a life-time would not 
pay the purchase price ! The very claim of the Socialists 
is that we ourselves, like capable men, should be permitted 
freedom to run our own industrial affairs ; that we should 
run our own railroads instead of leaving them to the abused 
trusteeship of a group of autocrats; that production should 
be by the people themselves for use, and not by monopo- 
lists for their own individual profit — a profit achieved by 
extorting tribute from the masses for the opportunity to 
toil. If, moreover, it is urged that speech and thought are 
still free, and government democratic, in name alone, the 
objection is immediately admitted, and as promptly met 
with the explanation that this is because the masses are 
still economically slaves, dependent upon their masters for 
liberty to produce. 

If, further, it is pointed out that to increase the power 
of the State is to entrench with even greater security the 
very power which enables the capitalist to prey upon 
society, it is at once replied that this is because govern- 
ment is at present the monopoly of the moneyed classes, and 
that the very object of the whole Socialist agitation is to 
abolish class rule, and classes altogether, by abolishing the 
monoply of the money-bag. 

The second ground of opposition is that it is not true 
that all suffering ought to be prevented. "Much suffering 
is curative, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy." 
This, it is obvious, merely raises again the previous ques- 
tion of whether the remedy proposed by the Socialists — 



1 78 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

viz. , that the people as a whole should take the manage- 
ment of their own affairs into their own hands — is a true 
remedy. If it is, they can scarcely be accused of wishing to 
prevent it. As regards the curative properties of suffering, 
it is a much to be lamented fact that hitherto mankind has 
realized much of its individuality through suffering ; but it is 
also true, as Mr. Oscar Wilde has most forcibly pointed out 
in The Soul Under Socialism,'''^ thdX a scarred and maimed 
individuality has been the result. Moreover, the lesson 
that Science has been most busily instilling during the last 
fifty years is that of the influence upon the creature of its 
environment ; an influence that, as I have previously said, 
grows less as we ascend in the scale of life, but which always 
remains extremely powerful. In dealing with sociological 
questions it is not the most highly developed type that we 
have to consider ; it is the average man, and, in countless 
instances, those who are far below the average man, and, 
therefore, far less capable of overcoming a hostile environ- 
ment. It is the curse of our competitive system that it is 
those who are least capable of resistance for whom the 
environment is made most difficult : how difficult, the fol- 
lowing quotation from a most cautious scientist. Professor 
Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century of February, iS88, will 
show. ' ' Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the 
population of all great industrial centers, whether in this 
or other countries, is aware that amidst a large and increas- 
ing body of that population there reigns supreme .... 
that condition which the French call la misere, a word for 
which I do not think there is any exact English equivalent. 
It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing 
which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the func- 

* Humboldt Library, No. 147. 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 



179 



lions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained ; 
in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd 
into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordi- 
nary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of 
attainment ; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced 
to brutality and drunkenness ; in which the pains accumu- 
late at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, 
stunted development, and moral degradation ; in which the 
prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of 
unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's 

grave When the organization of society instead of 

mitigating this tendency, tends to continue and intensify 
it, when a given social order plainly makes for evil and not 
for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high time 
to try a fresh experiment. I take it to be a mere plain 
truth that throughout industrial Europe there is not a 
single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast 
mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, 
and from a still greater mass, who, living just on the edge 
of the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it." 

When it is considered that in the richest city in the 
world, London, a whole population works at match-box 
making for 4)^ cents per gross (156), for which they find 
their own paste and firing, fetch their materials from the 
factory, and deliver the finished goods : that at fur-pulling 
another population works at another most unhealthy occu- 
pation for 6)^ cents an hour ; that at jam and pickle 
making 5 cents an hour is the average wage ; tliat at rope 
making the women lately struck for an advance to 5 cents 
an hour ; that at brush and toy making a steady worker 
can earn 72 cents a week, and that a sack maker who turns 
out twenty sacks a day can earn thereby 1 2 cents ; when 
these, which are but a few of the revelations which the 



i8o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

industry of the world's metropolis discloses to the inquirer, 
are taken into consideration, some feeble conception can be 
had of the suffering which Mr. Spencer regards as "cura- 
tive." These are, in Mr. Spencer's view, "the miseries of 
the undeserving poor ; ' ' these are some of those with whom 
the trouble is, not that they have no work but that "they 
either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out of it. 
They are simply good-for-nothings." In Looking Back- 
ward, Edward Bellamy tells us the parable of the rosebush 
of humanity which generations of gardeners had vainly 
endeavored to bring to bloom while planted in the swamp, 
but which, when finally transplanted, and set in sweet, dry 
earth, broke immediately into blossoms whose fragrance 
filled the world. For a similar, and as exquisite parable 
See Viera Pavlovna's second dream, in IV/ial's to be Done, 
by Tchernuishevsky, the celebrated Russian novelist and 
socialist. On this all Socialists, as evolutionists, are 
necessarily agreed. 

This brings me to Mr. Spencer's third objection, which 
is that ' ' with the existing defects of human nature many evils 
can only be thrust out of one place or form into another 
place or form — often being increased by the change." 
This argument he recurs to again and again in the 
various essays collected under the head of The Man versus 
the State, and again in his latest publication From Free- 
dom to Bondage. To this two answers may be made. In 
the first place the one thing that may be safely postulated 
of human nature is that it is constandy changing, and the 
surest mark of an advanced type is that it readily conforms 
to its environment. In anthropology Mr. Spencer himself 
has been most emphatic on this very point, dwelling at 
great length on the facility with which the advanced races 



777^ SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. i8i 

adapt themselves to the most extreme changes of climate. 
With a South Sea islander, on the other hand, the appar- 
ently imperceptible change involved in migration from one 
island to another is often fatal. To take our instances from 
what we see daily passing before our eyes, the country lad 
who gives up farming and takes a position in a New York 
office is a transformed being before twelve months have 
passed, and it is scarcely possible to recognize in the trim- 
stepping soldier the heavy-footed lout who a year ago was 
clumsily following the plow. Between the simple country 
folk that formed the bulk of England's population at the 
commencement of this century, and the keen-faced town 
population of to-day there is a far greater difference of 
manners, habits and ideals than there is between the average 
New York man and Londoner. 

The second and most obvious answer is that no abrupt 
change of human nature will be required, just as none was 
required when the telegraphers who had been previously 
working for a private company found themselves turned 
into employees of the English nation; just as none is 
required when a clerk is taken into partnership. How 
easily, thanks to the development of joint-stock companies, 
the transition from individual to social control can be 
effected I shall shortly show. 

We now arrive at Mr. Spencer's fourth and most 
strenuous objection, which is the colossal directive apparatus 
that a system of national administration of industry must 
necessarily entail. Upon this head I venture to quote 
apropos of Mr. Spencer, what I myself have said, in a 
previous number of this series :* "The management by the 

* Humboldt Library of Science, No. 147, p. 45. 



1 82 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

people of their own industrial affairs is to him an impossi- 
bility save under the administration of a colossal directorate 
wielding unprecedented power, and he supports his argu- 
ment with illustrations drawn from our unhappy political 
experience, and the admitted tyrannies of trades unions. 
Herein he shows an ignorance of the whole philosophy of 
Socialism that is inexcusable in one who is making it a 
special object of attack. To make my meaning clear I 
quote from Frederick Engels's preface to the famous mani- 
festo written by Karl Marx and himself in 1847, a document 
continuously, to this day, distributed wherever Socialist 
agitators are at work. He says : ' The manifesto being our 
joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the 
fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs 
to Marx. That proposition is that, in every historical 
epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and 
exchange, and the social organization necessarily following 
from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from 
which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual 
history of that epoch.' To miss this — and how often is it 
missed ! — is to misapprehend the whole position of the 
Socialist movement, for it is his clear comprehension of the 
truth th'at all social forms take their shape from the prevail- 
ing mode of economic production and exchange, which 
make the Socialist a revolutionist instead of a reformer, 
which makes him the uncompromising advocate of a total 
change of system, and the uncompromising foe of those 
who seek, by tinkering makeshifts, to prolong the life of the 
existing chaos of selfish competition, and as selfish com- 
bination. He therefore refuses to act with the Democrat 
or Mugwump, who professes enthusiasm for economy, 
because he recognizes that, so long as every man has to 
play for his own hand, every politician will make hay while 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 183 

the sun shines, just as every storekeeper, when trade is 
brisk, uses the opportunity as though it were his last. He 
refuses to beheve in the protestations of the free-trade 
bourgeoisie, because he knows that at heart all traders, 
working on a selfish basis as they must, yearn for monopoly 
so far as their own markets are concerned ; and he points 
to the record of the English manufacturers, whose pseudo- 
enthusiasm for freedom of exchange expired the instant 
they secured the free importation of the materials which 
their particular factories required. When he looks at a 
Trades Union, composed of individuals each of whom has 
his own bread-and-butter fight to make, and sees that Union 
in desperate war with employers whose very existence it 
threatens, the Socialist does not expect to see in it a model 
of voluntary cooperation. He expects to find it a military 
organization, following the tactics usually observed in the 
industrial warfare that everywhere prevails." Change the 
prevailing methods of production and exchange ; place 
them upon the peace footing of cooperation, instead of on 
the war basis of competition, and there will inevitably follow 
a change in the whole social organization. For, while it is 
obviously unfair to judge the conduct of humanity in times 
of profound tranquility by their conduct when engaged in 
a struggle where it is "thy life or mine!" so is it idle to 
attempt to sketch the producers and administrators of 
cooperation from the workmen, the business men, and the 
politicians of competition. It is only in our social re-unions, 
where each is anxious to assist his neighbor, that we catch 
a reflex of the light of a new life that has not as yet appeared 
above the horizon. Even there the reflection is necessarily 
faint, since such re-unions are to a great extent the battle- 
grounds of adventurers, male and female, spurred into action 
by the ever present bread-and-butter question. 



1 84 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

How easily the transition from private to public control 
can be accomplished, and how naturally things may be 
expected to adjust themselves, is well shown by the follow- 
ing passage from Capital and Land, a publication to which I 
have previously referred : — "How will Socialists provide for 
the administration and increase of capital? The question is 
being answered by the contemporary development of indus- 
trial organization. How much of the ' management of land ' 
is done now by the landlords, and how much by the farmer 
and the agent or the bailiff? The landlord's supposed func- 
tion in this respect is almost entirely performed by salaried 
professional men. As to capital, who manages it? The 
shareholders in the Joint Stock Companies, who own one- 
third of the whole industrial capital ? No. The sharehold- 
ing capitalist is a sleeping-partner. More and more every 
day is the capitalist pure and simple, the mere owner of the 
lien for interest, becoming separated from the administrator 
of capital, as he has long been separated from the wage- 
worker employed therewith. The working-partner, with 
sleeping-partner drawing interest, is every day taking the 
form of the director of a joint stock company. More and 
more is the management of industries passing into the 
hands of paid managers, and even the 'directors' 
emphasize the fiction that they are not mere money-bags 
and decorative M. P.'s by the humorous practice of taking 
fees for their labors at board meetings. The administrator 
of capital can be obtained at present for a salary equivalent 
to his competition value, whether the concern to be 
managed be a bank, a railway, a brewery, a mine, a factory, 
a theater or a hotel. The transfer to the community 
(national or local) of the ownership of the main masses of 
industrial capital need make no more difference in this 
respect than does the sale of shares on the Stock Exchange 
at the present moment." 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 185 

"But why is this change described as 'the coming 
slavery ' ? is a question which many will still ask. The 
reply is simple — All Socialism involves slavery." Mr. 
Spencer then proceeds to a definition of slavery. He tells 
us that what "fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that 
he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires," and 
that "the essential question is — How much is he com- 
pelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how 
much can he labor for his own benefit? The degree of his 
slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he 
is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain ; 
and it matters not whether his master is a single person or 
a society. If, without option, he has to labor for the 
society, and receives from the general stock such portion 
as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the 
society. Socialistic arrangements necessitate an enslave- 
ment of this kind ; and toward such an enslavement many 
recent measures, and still more the measures advocated, 
are carrying us." Turning aside from this he points out 
that the effect of municipalizing various industries, of which 
he gives numerous instances, is to diminish their profitable- 
ness as an investment for private capital ; that the con- 
stantly increasing public charges on real estate are, in the 
first place, so many deductions from its value as an invest- 
ment, and that thereby, in the second place, they cause the 
resistance to a change of tenure from private to public 
ownership to grow less and less. "After the Government 
has extended the practice of hiring the unemployed to work 
on deserted lands, or lands acquired at nominal prices, 
there will be reached a stage whence there is but a small 
further step to that arrangement which, in the program 
of the Democratic Federation, is to follow nationalization 
of the land — the ' organization of agricultural and industrial 
armies under State control on cooperative principles.' 



1 86 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

' ' To one who doubts whether such a revolution may be 
so reached, facts may be cited showing its Hkelihood. In 
Gaul, during the decline of the Roman Empire, 'so 
numerous were the receivers in comparison with the 
payers, and so enormous the weight of taxation, that the 
laborer broke down, the plains became deserts, and woods 
grew where the plow had been.' In like manner, 
when the French Revolution was approaching, the public 
burdens had become such, that many farms remained 
uncultivated and many were deserted : one- quarter of the 
soil was absolutely lying waste ; and in some provinces 
one-half was in heath." It will be noticed, that, illustrating 
in actual life the fable of the dog in the manger, the land- 
owners retained and were permitted to retain their titles, 
and that the whole argument simply amounts to a threat 
that, if the land-owners and the capitalists are not allowed 
to use their property as they may choose, they will see to 
it that no one else shall use it. It is on record that John 
Bright, as spokesman of the laissez faire party, uttered this 
very threat in most specific language when opposing in the 
House of Commons the passage of the Factory Bill, his 
statement being that if he and his fellow-capitalists were to 
be dictated to they would take themselves and their 
capital to America. 

It is necessary, however, for us to look again at Mr. 
Spencer's definition of slavery, and at his gradation of the 
degrees of slavery. Laboring ' ' under coercion to satisfy 
another's desires." To the paternal Socialism of a Bis- 
marck, so bitteriy opposed by all the German Socialists, 
the objection might apply ; but the Socialist movement of 
the world is not pater7ial it is fraternal; it is not autocratic 
it is democratic; it does not propose that the people shall 
be ordered, it proposes that they shall agree. It is to the 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 187 

ordering of the industrial captains of the age that the 
objection is made : to that, and to their so ordering things 
that labor can only obtain employment by consenting to 
yield up to non-laborers a portion of its product. This 
ceaseless robbery of surplus-value The Coming Slavery 
never condescends to notice, just as no notice whatever is 
taken of the fact that the organized Socialist movement 
throughout the world has steadily taught the workingmen 
that they must help themselves, and that paternal Socialism 
is simply a wolf masquerading as a sheep. Under the 
Democracy which Socialism, as itself a mere development of 
the Democratic movement, mtist necessarily be, we shall 
have, not laborers toiling under compulsion for society, 
but organized laborers toiling for themselves. 

By many thinkers serious objection to the nationaliza- 
tion of industry is raised on the plea that it necessarily 
implies coercion — the coercion of the minority by the 
majority. I have already called attention to the folly of 
judging the social arrangements of the future by the scheme 
which some individual Utopia-spinner of to-day may chance 
to favor. In the quotation at page 39 from Graham Wallas 
I have shown the view of a Socialist who thinks, as I myself 
and thousands of us think, that the only compulsion to 
labor will be the entirely natural one of want, which should 
always befall the obstinately idle, and them alone. Upon 
tliis, however — as I have insisted with an iteration that must 
appear most damnable — it is too early now to speak. How 
Society will arrange its social toil must be left for Society 
to arrange when it has got the wherewithal to toil. To 
this point of coercion, however, full attention is given in 
The Great Political Superstition, and the \^iew taken is, in 
reality, by no means unfavorable to Socialism. Herein Mr. 
Spencer tells us that the whole question is as to the points 



1 88 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

upon which, if the people were polled, they would be prac- 
tically unanimous in their agreement to cooperate, such 
cooperation carrying with it submission to the will of the 
majority. "Excepting only the Quakers, who, having 
done highly useful work in their time, are now dying out, 
all would unite for defensive war (not, however, for offen- 
sive war) ; and they would, by so doing, tacitly bind them- 
selves to conform to the will of the majority in respect of 
measures directed to that end. There would be practical 
unanimity, also, in the agreement to cooperate for defense 
against internal enemies as against external enemies. Omit- 
ting criminals, all must wish to have person and property 
adequately protected. In short, each citizen desires to 
preserve his life, to preserve those things which conduce 
to maintenance of his life and enjoyment of it, and to pre- 
serve intact his liberties both of using these things and 
getting further such. It is obvious to him that he cannot 
do all this if he acts alone. Against foreign invaders he 
is powerless unless he combines with his fellows ; and the 
business of protecting himself against domestic invaders, 
if he did not similarly combine, would be alike onerous, 
dangerous, and inefficient. In one other cooperation all 
are interested — use of the territory they inhabit. Did the 
primitive communal ownership survive, there would survive 
the primitive communal control of the uses to be made of 
land by individuals or by groups of them ; and decisions 
of the majority would rightly prevail respecting the terms 
on which portions of it might be employed for raising food, 
for making means of communication, and for other pur- 
poses. Even at present, though the matter has been com- 
plicated by the growth of private landownership, yet, since, 
the State is still supreme owner (every landowner being in 
law a tenant of the Crown) able to resume possession, or 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 189 

authorize compulsory purchase, at a fair price ; the impli- 
cation is that the will of the majority is valid respecting 
the modes in which, and conditions under which, parts of 
the surface or sub-surface, may be utilized ; involving 
certain agreements made on behalf of the public with 
private persons and companies. 

' ' Details are not needful here ; nor is it needful to discuss 
that border region lying between these classes of cases, and 
to say how much is included in the last, and how much is 
excluded with the first. For present purposes, it is suffi- 
cient to recognize the undeniable truth that there are 
numerous kinds of actions in respect of which men would 
not, if they were asked, agree with anything like unanimity 
to be bound by the will of the majority ; while there are 
some kinds of actions in respect of which they would 
almost unanimously agree to be thus bound. Here, then, 
we find a definite warrant for enforcing the will of the 
majority within certain limits, and a definite warrant for 
denying the authority of its will beyond those limits." 

A "definite warrant!" Upon what does the "definite 
warrant for enforcing the will of the majority" here depend? 
Not, as elsewhere urged so eloquently, upon the question 
of whether the proposed course of action is in accord or in 
disaccord with the fundamental laws of life, but upon the 
practically unanimous willingness to cooperate. We find 
ourselves immediately on shaky ground. Are we all 
willing to cooperate for defensive war? Perhaps, but only 
perhaps. For protection of property ? As property is now 
understood, certainly not. An immense, and world-wide 
party now advocates joi7it ownership of the means of pro- 
duction and distribution, as the only method of preventing 
the robbery by monopolists of the earnings of labor. Do 
all men believe in the sanctity of private property in land ? 



I go ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

Unquestionably not. So orthodox an economist as John 
Stuart Mill regarded it as entirely a question of expediency ; 
Mr. Spencer himself has shown that it is indefensible. On 
the other hand, there is actually to-day a practical unan- 
imity respecting a vast number of State and mimiclpal insti- 
tutions to which Mr. Spencer, in what is practically solitude, 
objects. That the compulsory education of the people 
is a necessary measure of defense ; that so also is sanitary 
legislation ; that sending condemned vessels to sea is but a 
form of murder ; that it is better for the English people to 
own their own telegraph system than to have it monopolized 
by an English Jay Gould ; that it is inhuman to work 
children of tender years in factories and coal mines : upon 
these, and numerous other points, there is to-day a practical 
unanimity. It is a unanimity arrived at by a consciousness 
that these measures, one and all, tend to the increase of 
life, general and individual — the very touchstone by which 
elsewhere Mr. Spencer, with true scientific insight, tests all 
legislation. 

To this touchstone, indeed, he immediately returns, 
when criticising Professor Jevons's dictum that "the first 
step must be to rid our minds of the idea that there are 
any such things in social matters as abstract rights" — a 
dictum in which Matthew Arnold agreed — and Bentham's 
proposition that government fulfills its office "by creating 
rights which it confers upon individuals ; rights of personal 
security ; rights of protection for honor ; rights of prop- 
erty," etc. Upon this he makes the following comment : — 

"The sovereign people jointly appoint representatives, and 
so create a government ; the government thus created 
creates rights ; and then, having created rights, it confers 
them on the separate members of the sovereign people by 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 



191 



which it was itself created. Here is a marvelous piece of 
political legerdemain ! Mr. Matthew Arnold, contending, 
in the article above quoted [one on copyright], that 
'property is the creation of law,' tells us to beware of 
the ' metaphysical phantom of property in itself ' Surely, 
among metaphysical phantoms the most shadowy is this 
which supposes a thing to be obtained by creating an 
agent, which creates the thing, and then confers the thing 
on its own creator!" It is only necessary to remark that 
the same marvelous piece of legerdemain is daily practiced, 
as, for instance, in the appointment of agents, trustees or 
directors into whose hands the appointors surrender all their 
powers, and from whom they take whatever dividends, or 
other shares, the directors, trustees or agents may declare. 
Similarly I pass, with but the scantest notice, a long and 
elaborate argument purporting to show that law has had its 
origin in custom, and that the "alleged creating of rights 
was nothing else than giving formal sanction and better 
definitions to those assertions of claims and recognitions 
which naturally originate from the individual desires of men 
who have to live in presence of one another." If it is 
merely a question of the respective priority of laws and 
customs — as to which much might be said on either side — 
I reply that the question is one that is absolutely immaterial, 
since neither from the stand-point of natural rights, nor 
from that of utilitarianism, can ancient pedigree command 
any title to respect. The oldest is not invariably the best. 
If it is meant to be asserted that rights can neither be 
abrogated nor added to by social agreements crystallized 
in laws, I reply that in social, in business, as well as in 
legislative life, we are all constantly surrendering rights in 
one direction that we may obtain additional rights in 
another. 



tg2 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



Priority of time, however, is made to play a great part 
in Mr. Spencer's argument, because he wishes to insist that 
' ' the fact is that property was well recognized before law 
existed ; the fiction is that property is the creation of law." 
This he emphasizes as a prelude to the statement that 
Comparative Sociology shows us that "along M-ith social 
progress it becomes in an increasing degree the business 
of the State, not only to give formal sanction to men's 
rights, but also to defend them against aggressors. Before 
permanent government exists, and in many cases after it is 
considerably developed, the rights of each individual are 
asserted and maintained by himself, or by his family. . . . 
But, as social organization advances, the central ruling 
power undertakes more and more to secure to individuals 
their personal safety, the safety of their possessions, and, 
to some extent, the enforcement of their claims established 
by contract. Originally concerned almost exclusively with 
defense of the society as a whole against other societies, or 
with conducting its attacks on other societies. Government 
has come more and more to discharge the function of 
defending individuals against one another. It needs but 
to recall the days when men habitually carried weapons, or 
to bear in mind the greater safety to person and property 
achieved by improved police administration during our own 
time, or to note the increased facilities now given for recov- 
ering small debts, to see that the insuring to each individual 
the unhindered pursuit of the objects of life, within limits 
set by others' like pursuits, is more and more recognized 
as a duty of the State. In other words, along with social 
progress, there goes not only a fuller recognition of these 
which we call natural rights, but also a better enforcement 
of them by Government : Government becomes more and 
more the servant to these essential pre-requisites for 
individual welfare." 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 



193 



"The essential pre-requisites for individual welfare!" 
These pre-requisites sadly need defining, for what they are 
is precisely the question round which the whole controversy 
rages. Are they limited to defense of person and property ; 
and, indeed, is defense of person limited to protection from 
violent assault, or from libel upon character? Our lives 
are inextricably interwoven. My next-door neighbor so 
conducts himself as to destroy my peace, and depreciate 
the value of my property. I bring an action and the law 
supplies a remedy, with Mr. Spencer's full approval. My 
next-door neighbor by neglect of the decencies of life, and 
by permitting his children to grow up in the densest igno- 
rance, brings the locality into disrepute, exposes my family 
to constant degradation, and endangers the stability of the 
society with the well-being of which my own welfare is 
bound up. I again seek the protection of a law, and Mr. 
Spencer cries "Tyranny !" Where is the Hne of legitimate 
government interference to be drawn? Where can it be 
drawn ? What warrant is there for drawing it arbitrarily at 
the defense of person and property, and of property defined, 
moreover, by primitive ideas? 

The Anarchists are fond of pointing to Mr. Spencer as 
one of their most distinguished teachers, but Mr. Spencer 
is no Anarchist. He does not condemn Government in 
every shape and form ; on the contrary he approves of 
"the central ruling power" that protects. He is far from 
preaching "rights " alone ; for, as shown in the review of the 
Data of Ethics, he lays the greatest stress on "duties." 
But the rights and duties of the ' ' central ruling power ' ' are 
limited by him strictly to the policeman's role. The point 
here submitted is that the question of the necessity of a 
* ' central ruling power, ' ' and the question of how far it should 
go, can be decided correctly, not by Mr. Spencer's fancy 



194 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



as to the matters upon which we are all agreed, but solely 
by the laws of life. If the life of the social organism and 
of its individual members is increased in length, and breadth, 
and depth, by the assumption of a novel function, the 
assumption is justified ; if it is decreased by such assump- 
tion the assumption stands condemned. Mr. Spencer's 
true position, and the one to which in the main he clings 
tenaciously, is that of the scientific utilitarian who regards 
the promotion of life as at once the immediate and the final 
aim. This last is also precisely the position of modern 
Socialism. It does not pretend to dictate to future genera- 
tions, saying — "here a directorate shall govern; in this 
department every citizen shall spend so many hours per 
day." It confidently leaves the settlement of all such 
questions to natural growth. It does, however, judge all 
institutions by the utilitarian standard, and the utilitarianism 
it strives to employ is not that empiric variety which, 
looking only to the immediate present, is guided solely by 
rule of thumb ; but the scientific utilitarianism which digs 
deep into the history of the past to unearth the roots of 
life and death. Back of all the tyrannies beneath which 
progress has withered it finds invariably the same power- — 
the power of the purse ; or, in other words, it finds that 
wherever there has been rule and subordination, the ruling 
class has always held its sway by the possession of some 
economic advantage of which the ruled have been deprived. 
It finds that in proportion to the greatness of the advantage 
has been the greatness of the power. 

It is the economic mold — that is to say, the method of 
production and distribution — that gives every other institu- 
tion its shape. If the economic system is such as to give 
the capitalist class undue advantage, and consequently 
undue power, that will be the class that actually sways all 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 195 

legislation, whether it be in democratic America and France, 
in constitutionar monarchy England, or in autocratic Ger- 
many. For politicians must live like other men, and, 
obedient to the imperious instinct of self-preservation, they 
will do the bidding of those who, controlling their bread 
and butter, are their masters.* If the economic system is 
such that women are dependent upon men for their support, 
women will be the slaves of men, and they will develop all 
the peculiar vices of slaves — they will fawn, intrigue, and 
sell themselves because they cannot help themselves. In 
our own society it is clearly noticeable that among what are 
called "the lower classes," whose women are as capable of 
earning their own living as are the men, marriages are 
dictated almost entirely by mutual affection : while among 
the so-called "upper-classes," whose women have no 
earning capacity, match-making is a profession having for 
its object the "catching" of a male supporter. Fine senti- 
ments and moralities do not alter these conditions in the 
least ; they merely white the sepulcher. And so throughout 
the length and breadth of our social institutions we find the 
same truth holding good. Everywhere the basis of power 
is economic; everywhere, in Bebel's phrase, "the root of 
all oppression is economic dependence upon the oppressor." 
To say that this is so is simply to repeat the old adage that 
"self-preservation is the first law of nature," a scientific 
truth that will not allow itself to be denied. This is the 
obvious truth that Socialist researches have laid bare, 



* "The Rothschilds, and the other great Hebrew bankers who 
habitually cooperate with them, have long been recognized as 
forming one of the great powers of Europe. They may, indeed, be 
reasonably regarded as the mightiest of human agencies, if supreme 
control consists in holding, as between the nations, the scales of 
peace and war." — N. Y. 5'7^«, June 17th, 1891, in an article entitled 
" Is Israel too much for Russia ? " 



196 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

following it throughout its countless ramifications. This, 
therefore, is the truth on which Socialism rests. 

This truth is like America, which is so big that 
Columbus couldn't help stumbling on it. Mr. Spencer 
naturally stumbled on it forty-nine years ago when he 
first began to examine the laws of life. He therefore 
expressed himself most emphatically upon the iniquity of 
private property in land, as necessarily involving slavery 
because placing the landless at the mercy of the land- 
owning class. Had he kept to that straight and obvious 
path he would have become a Socialist, and his work 
would have endured. He would have shown how, step by 
step, the evolution of our wage system separates the 
worker more and more completely from his means of 
subsistence ; renders more and more absolute the divorce 
between the worker and his tools. He would have shown 
that the development of the colossal machine-industry of 
this century has been, at bottom, nothing but the taking of 
the tools out of the hands of the worker and placing them 
in the frame- work of a machine, which the capitalist owns, 
and which the workingman may, if he is lucky, get the 
chance of oiling and keeping in repair.* He would have 

* " On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we 
find in it, as a general rule, though often no doubt under very 
altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsman 
or manufacturing workman ; with this difference, that, instead of 
being human implements, they are the implements of a mechanism, 
or mechanical implements. Either the entire machine is only a 
more or less altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft tool — 
as, for instance, the power-loom ; or the working parts fitted in the 
frame of tlie machine are old acquaintances, as spindles are in a 
mule, needles in a stocking-loom, saws in a sawing-machine, and 
knives in a chopping-machine. . . The machine proper is, there- 
fore, a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its 
tools the same operations that were formerly done by the work- 
man with similar tools." Karl Marx's Cfl/Z/a/. (Humboldt Publish- 
ing Co. ed., pp. 226 and 227.) 



THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 



197 



shown that this separation of the worker from his means of 
HveHhood, becomes continually more and more pronounced 
with every increase in the size of the machine ; that it 
necessarily becomes more and more impossible for the work- 
ingman to own the machine he has to operate, and that the 
machine thereby becomes more and more the exclusive 
monopoly of the capitalist. He would further have shown 
that, as the machine continues to increase in size, and, 
uniting with other machines, develops into a machinery 
system, it becomes more and more exclusively the monopoly 
of the capitalists ; and that these uniting, as their machinery 
unites itself into a colossal plant, force the small capitalists 
out of the ranks of the employing class and into those of 
the proletariat. Thus, starting from the simple law of self- 
preservation, and noting the first separation of the worker 
from his tools, Mr. Spencer would have traced the whole 
evolution to its ultimate development of a gigantic class 
struggle between the monopolists and the disinherited — a 
class struggle that has for its object the permanent abolition 
of all classes by placing the opportunities of life at the equa'l 
disposition of all. Had he done this he would have become, 
it is true, a Socialist, but, as I have already said, his work 
would have endured. 

As it is, the mind that, in 1842, was a marvel of 
precocity, has remained exactly where it stood in 1842. 
Unable then, as all his middle-class contemporaries were 
unable, to grasp the conception of an evolution that, within 
a short fifty years, would divide the whole civilized world 
into two hostile camps, his mind acquired a set from which 
it has never since recovered. He trusted, as all his con- 
temporaries trusted, that, somehow or other, from the blind 
play of conflicting interests, a condition of general equality 
would result ; and there have actually resulted such con- 



198 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

trasts of wealth and poverty as the world has never 
previously seen. It could not have been otherwise. The 
conditions necessary to the realization of equality were 
wanting from the very start. The philosopher, who started 
in his youth as the champion of the rights of man, is now, 
therefore, the wall against which a plutocracy, driven to the 
last ditch of argument, desperately sets its back. It is not 
that his powers have failed ; it is that he took originally a 
stand that faced both ways ; and that, having finally to 
chose his path, he elected to turn his back upon the rising 
sun. Hence his continued silence upon the land doctrine 
which he originally expounded, and has never dared to 
withdraw ; hence the bitterness of his criticisms on ' ' the 
undeserving poor." 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



199 



CHAPTER III. 
A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 

THE Fabian Essays, from which I have repeatedly 
quoted, were published in September, 1890; and, 
according to the Society's report of April, 1891, nearly 
twenty-five thousand had by then been sold. The report 
continues :—" The essays were extensively noticed by the 
press, and were in all cases favorably reviewed. So much 
interest did it excite that Mr. John Murray thought it profit- 
able to publish a counterblast, entitled A Plea for Liberty, 
to which Mr. Herbert Spencer contributed a preface. The 
price of this work is twelve shillings, and all that need be 
said of it is that it does not appear likely to reach a shilling 
edition." 

The preface alluded to is the last of Mr. Spencer's pub- 
lications on the social question, and upon this account I 
have thought it desirable to give it in its entirety. It is 
entitled From Freedom io Bondage, and is as follows : 

"Of the many ways in which common-sense inferences 
about social affairs are flatly contradicted by events (as 
when measures taken to suppress a book cause increased 
circulation of it, or as when attempts to prevent usurious 
rates of interest make the terms harder for the borrower, 
or as when there is greater difficulty in getting things at 
the places of production than elsewhere), one of the most 
curious is the way in which the more things improve the 
louder become the exclamations about their badness. 



200 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

"In days when the people were without any poHtical 
power their subjection was rarely complained of; but after 
free institutions had so far advanced in England that our « 
political arrangements were envied by Continental peoples, 
the denunciations of aristocratic rule grew gradually 
stronger, until there came a great widening of the franchise, 
soon followed by complaints that things were going wrong 
for want of still further widening. If we trace up the treat- 
ment of women from the days of savagedom, when they 
bore all the burdens and after the men had eaten received 
such food as remained, up through the middle ages, when 
they served the men at their meals, to our own day, when 
throughout our social arrangements the claims of women 
are always put first, we see that along with the worst treat- 
ment there went the least apparent consciousness that the 
treatment was bad ; while now that they are better treated 
than ever before, the proclaiming of their grievances daily 
strengthens, the loudest outcries coming from ' the paradise 
of women,' America. A century ago, when scarcely a man 
could be found who was not occasionally intoxicated, and 
when inability to take one or two bottles of wine brought 
contempt, no agitation arose against the vice of drunken- 
ness ; but now that, in the course of fifty years, the volun- 
tary efforts of temperance societies, joined with more general 
causes, have produced comparative sobriety, there are 
vociferous demands for laws to prevent the ruinous effects 
of the liquor traffic. Similar again with education. A few 
generations back ability to read and write was practically 
limited to the upper and middle classes, and the suggestion 
that the rudiments of culture should be given to laborers 
was never made, or, if made, ridiculed ; but when, in 
the days of our grandfathers, the Sunday-school system, 
initiated by a few philanthropists, began to spread and was 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 20 1 

followed by the establishment of day schools, with the 
result that among the masses those who could read and 
write were no longer the exceptions, and the demand for 
cheap literature rapidly increased, there began the cry that 
the people were perishing for lack of knowledge, and that 
the State must not simply educate them, but must force 
education upon them. 

' ' And so it is, too, with the general state of the popula- 
tion in respect to food, clothing, shelter and the appliances 
of life. Leaving out of the comparison early barbaric states, 
there has been a conspicuous progress from the time when 
most rustics lived on barley bread, rye bread and oatmeal, 
down to our own time, when the consumption of white 
wheaten bread is universal — from the days when coarse 
jackets reaching to the knees left the legs bare, down to 
the present day, when laboring people, like their employers, 
have the whole body covered by two or more layers of 
clothing — from the old era of single-roomed huts without 
chimneys, or from the fifteenth century, when even an 
ordinary gentleman's house was commonly without wainscot 
or plaster on its walls, down to the present century, when 
every cottage has more rooms than one, and the houses of 
artisans usually have several, while all have fire-places, 
chimneys, and glazed windows, accompanied mostly by 
paper-hangings and painted doors ; there has been, I say, 
a conspicuous progress in the condition of the people. 
And this progress has been still more marked within our 
own time. Any one who can look back sixty years, when 
the amount of pauperism was far greater than now and 
beggars abundant, is struck by the comparative size and 
finish of the new houses occupied by operatives — by the 
better dress of workmen, who wear broadcloth on Sundays, 
and that of servant girls, who vie with their mistresses — 



202 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

by the higher standard of Hving which leads to a great 
demand for the best qualities of food by working people ; 
all results of the double change to higher wages and cheaper 
commodities, and a distribution of taxes which has relieved 
the lower classes at the expense of the upper classes. He 
is struck, too, by the contrast between the small space 
which popular welfare then occupied in public attention, 
and the large space it now occupies, with the result that 
outside and inside Parliament, plans to benefit the millions 
form the leading topics, and every one having means is 
expected to join in some philanthropic effort. Yet while 
elevation, mental and physical, of the masses is going on 
far more rapidly than ever before — while the lowering of 
the death-rate proves that the average life is less trying, 
there swells louder and louder the cry that the evils are so 
great that nothing short of a social revolution can cure 
them. In presence of obvious improvements, joined with 
that increase of longevity which even alone yields conclu- 
sive proof of general amelioration, it is proclaimed, with 
increasing vehemence, that things are so bad that society 
must be pulled to pieces and reorganized on another plan. 
In this case, then, as in the previous cases instanced, in 
proportion as the evil decreases the denunciation of it 
increases ; and as fast as natural causes are shown to be 
powerful there grows up the belief that they are powerless. 
" Not that the evils to be remedied are small. Let no one 
suppose that by emphasizing the above paradox I wish to 
make light of the sufferings which most men have to bear. 
The fates of the great majority have ever been, and doubt- 
less are, so sad that it is painful to think of them. Unques- 
tionably the existing type of social organization is one 
which none who cares for his kind can contemplate with 
satisfaction ; and unquestionably men's activities accom- 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



203 



panying this type are far from being admirable. The 
strong divisions of rank and the immense inequaHties of 
means are at variance with that ideal of human relations on 
which the sympathetic imagination likes to dwell ; and the 
average conduct, under the pressure and excitement of 
social life as at present carried on, is in sundry respects 
repulsive. Though the many who revile competition 
strangely ignore the enormous benefits resulting from it — 
though they forget that most of the appliances and 
products distinguishing civilization from savagery, and 
making possible the maintenance of a large population on 
a small area, have been developed by the struggle for 
existence — though they disregard the fact that while every 
man, as producer, suffers from the under-bidding of 
competitors, yet, as consumer, he is immensely advantaged 
by the cheapening of all he has to buy — though they 
persist in dwelling on the evils of competition, saying 
nothing of its benefits, yet it is not to be denied that the 
evils are great, and form a large set-off from the benefits. 
The system under which we at present live fosters dis- 
honesty and lying. It prompts adulterations of countless 
kinds ; it is answerable for the cheap imitations which 
eventually in many cases thrust the genuine articles out of 
the market ; it leads to the use of short weights and false 
measures : it introduces bribery, which vitiates most trading 
relations, from those of the manufacturer and buyer down 
to those of the shopkeeper and servant ; it encourages 
deception to such an extent that an assistant who cannot 
tell a falsehood with a good face is blamed ; and often it 
gives the conscientious trader the choice between adopting 
the malpractices of his competitors, or greatly injuring his 
creditors by bankruptcy. Moreover, the extensive frauds, 
common throughout the commercial world and daily 



204 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



exposed in law courts and newspapers, are largely due to 
the pressure under which competition places the higher 
industrial classes ; and are otherwise due to that lavish 
expenditure which, as implying success in the commercial 
struggle, brings honor. With these minor evils must be 
joined the major one, that the distribution achieved by the 
system gives to those who regulate and superintend a share 
of the total produce which bears too large a ratio to the 
share it gives to the actual workers. Let it not be thought, 
then, that in saying what I have said above, I underestimate 
those vices of our competitive system, which, thirty years 
ago, I described and denounced. But it is not a question 
of absolute evils ; it is a question of relative evils — whether 
the evils at present suffered are or are not less than the 
evils which would be suffered under another system — 
whether efforts for mitigation along the lines thus far 
followed are not more likely to succeed than efforts along 
utterly different lines. 

' ' This is the question here to be considered. I must be 
excused for first of all setting forth sundry truths which are 
to some, at any rate, tolerably familiar, before proceeding to 
draw inferences which are not so familiar. 

"Speaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid 
suffering. Here, remembrance of the pangs of hunger 
prompts him ; and there, he is prompted by the sight of 
the slave-driver's lash. His immediate dread may be the 
punishment which physical circumstances will inflict, or 
may be punishment inflicted by human agency. He must 
have a master ; but the master may be Nature or may be a 
fellow man. When he is under the impersonal coercion of 
Nature, we say that he is free ; and when he is under the 
personal coercion of some one above him, we call him, 
according to the degree of his dependence, a slave, a serf 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 205 

or a vassal. Of course I omit the small minority who 
inherit means ; an incidental, and not a necessary, social 
element. I speak only of the vast majority, both cultured 
and uncultured, who maintain themselves by labor, bodily 
or mental, and must either exert themselves of their own 
unconstrained wills, prompted only by thoughts of naturally 
resulting evils or benefits, or must exert themselves with 
constrained wills, prompted by thoughts of evils and 
benefits artificially resulting. 

"Men may work together in a society under either of 
these two forms of control ; forms which, though in many 
cases mingled, are essentially contrasted. Using the word 
cooperation in its wide sense and not in that restricted 
sense now commonly given to it, we may say that social 
life must be carried on by either voluntary cooperation, or 
compulsory cooperation ; or, to use Sir Henry Maine's 
words, the system must be that of contract or that of 
status — that in which the individual is left to do the best he 
can by his spontaneous efforts, and get success or failure 
according to his efficiency, and that in which he has his 
appointed place, works under coercive rule, and has his 
apportioned share of food, clothing and shelter. 

"The system of voluntary cooperation is that by which, 
in civilized societies, industry is now everywhere carried 
on. Under a simple form we have it on every farm, where 
the laborers, paid by the farmer himself and taking order? 
direcdy from him, are free to stay or go as they please. 
And of its more complex form an example is yielded by 
every manufacturing concern in which, under partners, 
come clerks and managers, and under these timekeepers 
and overlookers, and under these operatives of different 
grades. In each of these cases there is an obvious working 
together, or cooperation of employer and employed, to 



2o6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

obtain in one case a crop and in the other case a manufac- 
tured stock. And then, at the same time, there is a far 
more extensive, though unconscious, cooperation with other 
workers of all grades throughout the society. For, while 
these particular employers and employed are severally 
occupied with their special kinds of work, other employers 
and employed are making other things needed for the 
carrying on of their lives as well as the lives of all others. 
This voluntary cooperation, from its simplest to its most 
complex forms, has the common trait that those concerned 
work together by consent. There is no one to force terms 
or to force acceptance. It is perfectly true that in many 
cases an employer may give, or an employee may accept, 
with reluctance ; circumstances he says compel him. But 
what are the circumstances? In the one case there are 
goods ordered, or a contract entered into, which he cannot 
supply or execute without yielding ; and in the other case 
he submits to a wage less than he likes because otherwise 
he will have no money wherewith to procure food and 
warmth. The general formula is not — 'Do this, or I will 
make you:' but it is — 'Do this, or leave your place and 
take the consequences.' 

''On the other hand, compulsory cooperation is exem- 
plified by an army — not so much by our own army, the 
service in which is under agreement for a specified period, 
but in a Continental army, raised by conscription. Here, 
in time of peace the daily duties — cleaning, parade, drill, 
sentry work and the rest — and in time of war the various 
actions of the camp and the battle field, are done under 
command, without room for any exercise of choice. Up 
from the private soldier through the non-commissioned 
officers and the half-dozen or more grades of commissioned 
officers, the universal law is absolute obedience from the 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



207 



grade below to the grade above. The sphere of individual 
will is such only as is allowed by the will of the superior. 
Breaches of subordination are, according to their gravity, 
dealt with by deprivation of leave, extra drill, imprison- 
ment, flogging, and in the last resort, shooting. Instead 
of the understanding that there must be obedience in respect 
of specified duties under pain of dismissal ; the understand- 
ing now is — 'Obey in everything ordered under penalty 
of inflicted suffering and perhaps death.' 

"This form of cooperation, still exemplified in an army, 
has in days gone by been the form of cooperation through- 
out the civil population. Everywhere, and at all times, 
chronic war generates a militant type of structure, not in 
the body of soldiers only but throughout the community at 
large. Practically, while the conflict between societies is 
actively going on, and fighting is regarded as the only 
manly occupation, the society is the quiescent army and 
the army the mobilized society : that part which does not 
take part in battle, composed of slaves, serfs, women, 
etc., constituting the commissariat. Naturally, therefore, 
throughout the mass of inferior individuals constituting the 
commissariat, there is maintained a system of discipline 
identical in nature if less elaborate. The fighting body 
being, under such conditions, the ruling body, and the rest 
of the community being incapable of resistance, those who 
control the fighting body will, of course, impose their control 
upon the non-fighting body : and the regime of coercion 
will be applied to it with such modifications only as the 
different circumstances involve. Prisoners of war become 
slaves. Those who were free cultivators before the con- 
quest of their country, become serfs attached to the soil. 
Petty chiefs become subject to superior chiefs : these smaller 
lords become vassals to over-lords ; and so on up to the 



2o8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

highest : the social ranks and powers being of like essential 
nature with the ranks and powers throughout the military 
organization. And while for the slaves compulsory coopera- 
tion is the unqualified system, a cooperation which is in 
part compulsory is the system that pervades all grades 
above. Each man's oath of fealty to his suzerain takes the 
form — 'I am your man.' 

' ' Throughout Europe, and especially in our own country, 
this system of compulsory cooperation gradually relaxed in 
rigor, while the system of voluntary cooperation step by 
step replaced it. As fast as war ceased to be the business 
of life, the social structure produced by war and appropriate 
to it slowly became qualified by the social structure pro- 
duced by industrial life and appropriate to it. In propor- 
tion as a deereasing part of the community was devoted 
to offensive and defensive activities, an increasing part 
became devoted to production and distribution. Growing 
more numerous, more powerful, and taking refuge in towns, 
where it was less under the power of the militant class, this 
industrial population carried on its life under the system 
of voluntary cooperation. Though municipal governments 
and guild regulations, partially pervaded by ideas and 
usages derived from the militant type of society, were in 
some degree coercive ; yet production and distribution 
were in the main carried on under agreement — alike 
between buyers and sellers and between masters and work- 
men. As fast as these social relations and forms of activity 
became dominant in urban populations, they influenced the 
whole community : compulsory cooperation lapsed more 
and more, through money commutation for services, mili- 
tary and civil ; while divisions of rank became less rigid 
and class-power diminished, until at length restraints exer- 
cised by incorporated trades have fallen into desuetude, as 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



209 



well as the rule of rank over rank. Voluntary cooperation 
became the universal principle. Purchase and sale became 
the law for all kinds of services as well as for all kinds of 
commodities. 

"The restlessness generated by pressure against the 
conditions of existence perpetually prompts the desire to try 
a new position. Everyone knows how long continued rest 
in one attitude becomes wearisome — everyone has found 
how even the best easy chair, at first rejoiced in, becomes 
after many hours intolerable ; and change to a hard seat, 
previously occupied and rejected, seems for a time to be a 
great relief It is the same with incorporated humanity. 
Having by long struggles emancipated itself from the hard 
discipline of the ancient regime, and having discovered that 
the new regime into which it has grown, though relatively 
easy, is not without stresses and pains, its impatience with 
these prompts the wish to try another system ; which other 
system is, in principle if not in appearance, the same as that 
which during past generations was escaped from with much 
rejoicing. 

" For as fast as the regime of contract is discarded the 
regime of status is of necessity adopted. As fast as volun- 
tary cooperation is abandoned compulsory cooperation must 
be substituted. Some kind of organization labor must have ; 
and if it is not that which arises by agreement under free 
competition, it must be that which is imposed by authority. 
Unlike in appearance and names as it may be to the old 
order of slaves and serfs, working under masters who were 
coerced by barons, who were themselves vassals of dukes 
or kings, the new order wished for, constituted by workers 
under foremen of small groups, overlooked by superinten- 
dents, who are subject to higher local managers, who are 
controlled by superiors of districts, themselves under a 



2IO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

central government, must be essentially the same in princi- 
ple. In the one case as in the other, there must be estab- 
lished grades, and enforced subordination of each grade to 
the grades above. This is a truth which the Communist 
or the Socialist does not dwell upon. Angry with the 
existing system under which each of us takes care of him- 
self, while all of us see that each has fair play, he thinks 
how much better it would be for all of us to take care of 
each of us ; and he refrains from thinking of the machinery 
by which this is to be done. Inevitably, if each is to be 
cared for by all, then the embodied all must get the means 
— the necessaries of life. What it gives to each must be 
taken from the accumulated contributions ; and it must 
therefore require from each his proportion — must tell him 
how much he has, to give to the general stock in the shape 
of production, that he may have so much in the shape of 
sustentation. Hence, before he can be provided for, he 
must put himself under orders, and obey those who say 
what he shall do, and at what hours, and where ; and who 
give him his share of food, clothing and shelter. If com- 
petition is excluded, and with it buying and selling, there 
can be no voluntary exchange of so much labor for so much 
produce ; but there must be apportionment of the one to 
the other by appointed officers. This apportionment must 
be enforced. Without alternative the work must be done, 
and without alternative the benefit, whatever it may be, 
must be accepted. For the worker may not leave his place 
at will and offer himself elsewhere. Under such a system 
he cannot be accepted elsewhere, save by order of the 
authorities. And it is manifest that a standing order 
would forbid employment in one place of an insubordinate 
member from another place. The system could not be 
worked if the workers were severally allowed to go or 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 21 1 

come as they pleased. With corporals and sergeants 
under them, the captains of industry must carry out the 
orders of their colonels, and these of their generals, up to 
the council of the commander-in-chief, and obedience must 
be required throughout the industrial army as throughout 
a fighting army. ' Do your prescribed duties and take 
your apportioned rations,' must be the rule of the one as 
of the other. ' Well, be it so ; ' replies the Socialist. 
'The workers will appoint their own officers, and these 
will always be subject to criticisms of the mass they regu- 
late. Being thus in fear of public opinion, they will be 
sure to act judiciously and fairly ; or when they do not, 
will be deposed by the popular vote, local or general. 
Where will be the grievance of being under superiors, when 
the superiors themselves are under democratic control?' 
And in this attractive vision the Socialist has full belief 

"Iron and brass are simpler things than flesh and 
blood, and dead wood than living nerve ; and a machine 
constructed of the one works in more definite ways than 
an organism constructed of the other — especially when the 
machine is worked by the inorganic forces of steam or 
water, while the organism is worked by the forces of living 
nerve centers. Manifestly, then, the ways in which the 
machine will work are much more readily calculable than 
the ways in which the organism will work. Yet in how 
few cases does the inventor foresee rightly the actions of 
his new apparatus ! Read the patent list, and it will be 
found that not more than one device in fifty turns out to be 
of any service. Plausible as his scheme seemed to the 
inventor, one or other hitch prevents the intended operation 
and brings out a widely different result from, that which he 
wished. 

■ ' What, then, shall we say of these schemes which have 



212 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

to do not with the dead matters and forces, but with 
complex living organisms working in ways less readily 
foreseen, and which involve the cooperation of multitudes 
of such organisms? Even the units out of which this 
rearranged body politic is to be formed are often incom- 
prehensible. Every one is from time to time surprised by 
others' behavior, and even by the deeds of relatives who 
are best known to him. Seeing, then, how uncertainly any 
one can foresee the actions of an individual, how can he 
with any certainty foresee the operation of a social 
structure? He proceeds on the assumption that all con- 
cerned will judge rightly and act fairly — will think as they 
ought to think, and act as they ought to act ; and he 
assumes this regardless of the daily experiences which 
show him that men do neither the one nor the other, and 
forgetting that the complaints he makes against the existing 
system show his belief to be that men have neither the 
wisdom nor the rectitude which his plan requires them to 
have. 

' ' Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those 
who have observed their results ; and paper social systems 
similarly affect those who have contemplated the available 
evidence. How little the men who wrought the French 
revolution and were chiefly ^concerned in setting up the 
new governmental apparatus, dreamed that one of the 
early actions of this apparatus would be to behead them all ! 
How little the men who drew up the American Declaration 
of Independence and framed the Republic, anticipated that 
after some generations the Legislature would lapse into the 
hands of wire-pullers ; that its doings would turn upon the 
contests of office-seekers ; that political action would be 
everywhere vitiated by the intrusion of a foreign element 
holding the balance between parties ; that electors, instead 



A PLEA FOR LlBEkTY. 



213 



of judging for themselves, would habitually be led to the 
polls in thousands by their 'bosses,' and that respectable 
men would be driven out of pubHc life by the insults and 
slanders of professional politicians. Nor were there better 
provisions in those who gave constitutions to the various 
other States of the New World, in which unnumbered 
revolutions have shown with wonderful persistence the 
contrasts between the expected results of political systems 
and the achieved results. It has been no less thus with 
proposed systems of social reorganization, so far as they 
have been tried. Save where celibacy has been insisted on, 
their history has been everywhere one of disaster ; ending 
with the history of Cabet's Icarian colony lately given by 
one of its members, Mme. Fleury Robinson, in The Open 
Court — a history of splittings, resplittings, re-resplittings, 
accompanied by numerous individual secessions and final 
dissolution. And for the failure of such social schemes, as 
for the failure of the political schemes, there has been one 
general cause. 

' ' Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified 
throughout the heavens and on the earth; especially through- 
out the organic world ; and above all in the animal division 
of it. No creature, save the simplest and most minute, 
commences its existence in a form like that which it 
eventually assumes ; and in most cases the unlikeness is 
great — so great that kinship between the first and the last 
forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated 
in every poultry yard and every garden. More than this 
is true. The changes of form are often several ; each of 
them being an apparently complete transformation — (tg%, 
larva, pupa, imago, for example. And this universal 
metamorphosis, displayed alike in the development of a 
planet and of every seed which germinates on its surface, 



214 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



holds also of societies, whether taken as wholes or in their 
separate institutions. No one of them ends as it begins ; 
and the difference between its original structure and its 
ultimate structure is such that, at the outset, change of the 
one into the other would have seemed incredible. In the 
rudest tribe the chief, obeyed as leader in war, loses his 
distinctive position when the fighting is over ; and even 
where continued warfare has produced permanent chieftain- 
ship, the chief, building his own hut, getting his own food, 
making his own implements, differs from others only by his 
predominant influence. There is no sign that in course of 
time, by conquests and unions of tribes and consolidations 
of clusters so formed with other such clusters, until a nation 
has been produced, there will originate from the primitive 
chief one who, as czar or emperor, surrounded with pomp 
and ceremony, has despotic power over scores of millions, 
exercised through hundreds of thousands of soldiers and 
hundreds of thousands of officials. When the early 
Christian missionaries, having humble externals and passing 
self-denying lives, spread over Pagan Europe, preaching 
forgiveness of injuries and the returning of good for evil, 
no one dreamed that in course of time their representatives 
would form avast hierarchy, possessing everywhere a 'large 
part of the land, distinguished by the haughtiness of its 
members, grade above grade, ruled by military bishops 
who led their retainers to battle, and headed by a pope 
exercising supreme power over kings. So, too, has it been 
with that very industrial system which many are now so 
eager to replace. In its original form there was no 
prophecy of the factory system or kindred organizations of 
workers. Differing from them only as being the head of 
his house the master worked along with his apprentices 
and a journeyman or two, sharing with them his table and 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



215 



accommodation and himself selling their joint produce. 
Only with industrial growth did there come employment 
of a larger number of assistants and a relinquishment on 
the part of the master of all other business than that of 
superintendence. And only in the course of recent times 
did there evolve the organizations under which the labors 
of hundreds and thousands of men receiving wages are 
regulated by various orders of paid officials under a single 
or multiple head. These originally small, semi-socialistic 
groups of producers, like the compound families or house- 
communities of early ages, slowly dissolved because they 
could not hold their ground ; the larger establishments, 
with better subdivision of labor, succeeded because they 
ministered to the wants of society more effectually. But 
we need not go back through the centuries to trace trans- 
formations sufficiently great and unexpected. On the day 
when ^30,000 a year in aid of education was voted as an 
experiment the name of idiot would have been given to an 
opponent who prophesied that in fifty years the sum spent 
through imperial taxes and local rates would amount to 
;!^ 1 0,000, 000, or who said that the aid to education would 
be followed by aids to feeding and clothing, or who said 
that parents and children, alike deprived of all option, 
would, even if starving, be compelled by fine or imprison- 
ment to conform and receive that which, with papal 
assumption, the State calls education. No one, I say, 
would have dreamed that out of so innocent-looking a 
germ would have so quickly evolved this tyrannical system, 
tamely submitted to by people who fancy themselves free. 
"Thus in social arrangements, as in all other things, 
change is inevitable. It is foolish to suppose that new 
institutions set up will long retain the character given them 
by those who set them up. Rapidly or slowly they will be 



2i6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

transformed into institutions unlike those intended, so 
unlike as even to be unrecognizable by their devisers. 
And what, in the case before us, will be the metamorphosis ? 
The answer pointed to by instances above given and 
warranted by various analogies is manifest. 

' ' A cardinal trait in all advancing organization is the 
development of the regulative apparatus. If the parts of 
a whole are to act together there must be appliances by 
which their actions are directed, and in proportion as the 
whole is large and complex and has many requirements to 
be met by many agencies, the directive apparatus must be 
extensive, elaborate and powerful. That it is thus with 
individual organisms needs no saying, and that it must be 
thus with social organisms is obvious. Beyond the regu- 
lative apparatus such as in our own society is required for 
carrying on National defense and maintaining public order 
and personal safety, there must, under the regime of Social- 
ism, be a regulative apparatus everywhere controlling all 
kinds of production and distribution and everywhere appor- 
tioning the shares of products of each kind required for 
each locality, each working establishment, each individual. 
Under our existing voluntary cooperation, with its free 
contracts and its competition, production and distribution 
need no official oversight. Demand and supply, and the 
desire of each man to gain a living by supplying the needs 
of his fellows, spontaneously evolve that wonderful system 
whereby a great city has its food daily brought round to 
all doors or stored at adjacent shops ; has clothing for its 
citizens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties ; has 
its houses and furniture and fuel ready made or stocked in 
each locality, and has mental pabulum from half-penny 
papers, hourly hawked around, to weekly shoals of novels 
and less abundant books of instruction, furnished without 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



217 



stint for small payments. And throughout the kingdom, 
production as well as distribution is similarly carried on 
with the smallest amount of superintendence which proves 
efficient ; while the quantities of the numerous commodities 
required daily in each locality are adjusted without any 
other agency than the pursuit of profit. Suppose now 
that this industrial regime of willinghood, acting spontane- 
ously, is replaced by a regime of industrial obedience, 
enforced by public officials. Imagine the vast' administra- 
tion required for that distribution of all commodities to all 
people in every city, town and village, which is now effected 
by traders ! Imagine, again, the still more vast adminis- 
tration required for doing all that farmers, manufacturers 
and merchants do ; having not only its various orders of 
local superintendents, but its sub- centers and chief centers 
needed for apportioning the quantities of each thing every- 
where needed, and the adjustment of them to the requisite 
times. Then add the staffs wanted for working mines, 
railways, roads, canals ; the staffs required for conducting 
the importing and exporting businesses and the administra- 
tion of mercantile shipping ; the staffs required for supply- 
ing towns not only with water and gas, but with locomotion 
by tramways, omnibuses and other vehicles, and for the 
distribution of power, electric and other. Join with these 
the existing postal, telegraphic and telephonic administra- 
tions, and finally those of the police and army, by which 
the dictates of this immense consolidated regulative system 
are to be everywhere enforced. Imagine all this, and then 
ask what will be the position of the actual workers. 
Already on the Continent, where governmental organiza- 
tions are more elaborate and coercive than here, there are 
chronic complaints of the tyranny of bureaucracies — the 
hauteur and brutality of their members. What will these 



2i8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

become when not only the more public actions of citizens 
are controlled, but there is added this far more extensive 
control of all their respective daily duties? What will 
happen when the various divisions of this vast army of 
officials, united by interests common to officialism — the 
interests of the regulators versus those of the regulated — 
have at their command whatever force is needful to suppress 
insubordination and act as * saviors of society ? ' Where 
will be the actual diggers and miners and smelters and 
weavers, when those who order and superintend, every- 
where arranged class above class, have come, after some 
generations, to intermarry, with those of kindred grades, 
under feelings such as are operative in existing classes ; 
and when there have been so produced a series of castes 
rising in superiority ; and when all these, having every- 
thing in their own power, have arranged modes of living 
for their own advantage : eventually forming a new aris- 
tocracy far more elaborate and better organized than the 
old? How will the individual worker fare if he is dissatis- 
fied with his treatment — thinks that he has not an adequate 
share of the products, or has more to do than can rightly 
be demanded, or wishes to undertake a function for which 
he feels himself fitted but which is not thought proper for 
him by his superiors, or desires to make an independent 
career for himself? This dissatisfied unit in the immense 
machine will be told he must submit or go. The mildest 
penalty for disobedience will be industrial excommunica- 
tion. And if an international organization of labor is 
formed as proposed, exclusion in one country will mean 
exclusion in all others — industrial excommunication will 
mean starvation. 

"That things must take this course is a conclusion 
reached not by deduction only, nor only by induction from 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



219 



those experiences of the past instanced above, nor only 
from consideration of the analogies furnished by organisms 
of all orders ; but it is reached also by observation of cases 
daily under our eyes. The truth that the regulative struc- 
ture always tends to increase in power, is illustrated by 
every established body of men. The history of each 
learned society, or society for other purpose, shows how 
the staff, permanent or partially permanent, sways the 
proceedings and determines the actions of the Society with 
but little resistance, even when most members of the Soci- 
ety disapprove : the repugnance to anything like a revolu- 
tionary step being ordinarily an efficient deterrent. So it 
is with joint-stock companies — those owning railways for 
example. The plans of a board of directors are usually 
authorized with little or no discussion ; and if there is any 
considerable opposition, this is forthwith crushed by an 
overwhelming number of proxies sent by those who 
always support the existing administration. Only when the 
misconduct is extreme does the resistance of shareholders 
suffice to displace the ruhng body. Nor is it otherwise 
with societies formed of workingmen and having the 
interests of labor especially at heart — the trades unions. 
In these, too, the regulative agency becomes all powerful. 
Their members, even when they dissent from the policy 
pursued, habitually yield to the authorities they have set 
up. As they cannot secede without making enemies of 
their fellow-workmen, and often losing all chance of employ- 
ment, they succumb. We are shown, too, by the late 
Congress that already, in the general organization of trades 
unions so recently formed, there are complaints of 'wire- 
pullers,' and 'bosses' and 'permanent officials.' If, then, 
this supremacy of the regulators is seen in bodies of quite 
modern origin formed of men who have, in many of the 



220 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

cases instanced, unhindered powers of asserting their inde- 
pendence, what will the supremacy of the regulators become 
in long-established bodies, in bodies which have grown vast 
and highly organized, and in bodies which, instead of con- 
trolling only a small part of the unit's life, control the whole 
of his life ? 

"Again there will come the rejoinder : ' We shall guard 
against all that. Everybody will be educated ; and all, 
with their eyes constantly open to the abuse of power, will 
be quick to prevent it.' The worth of these expectations 
would be small even could we not identify the causes which 
will bring disappointment ; for in human affairs the most 
promising schemes go wrong in ways which no one antici- 
pated. But in this case the going wrong will be necessitated 
by causes which are conspicuous. The working of institu- 
tions is determined by men's characters, and the existing 
defects in their characters will inevitably bring about the 
results above indicated. There is no adequate endow- 
ment of those sentiments required to prevent the growth 
of a despotic bureaucracy. 

"Were it needful to dwell on indirect evidence, much 
might be made of that furnished by the behavior of the 
so-called Liberal party — a party which, relinquishing the 
original conception of a leader as a mouthpiece for a known 
and accepted policy, thinks itself bound to accept a policy 
which its leader springs upon it without consent or warn- 
ing — a party so utterly without the feeling and idea implied 
by liberalism, as not to resent this trampling on the right 
of private judgment which constitutes the root of liberalism 
— nay, a party which vilifies as renegade Liberals those of 
its members who refuse to surrender their independence ! 
But without occupying space with indirect proofs that the 
mass of men have not the natures required to check the 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 221 

development of tyrannical officialism, it will suffice to con- 
template the direct proofs furnished by those classes 
among whom the socialistic idea most predominates, and 
who think themselves most interested in propagating it — 
the operative classes. These would constitute the great 
body of the socialistic organization, and their characters 
would determine its nature. What, then, are their charac- 
ters as displayed in such organizations as they have already 
formed ? 

* ' Instead of the selfishness of the employing classes and 
the selfishness of competition, we are to have the unselfish- 
ness of a mutually-aiding system. How far is this unselfish- 
ness now shown in the behavior of working men to one 
another? What shall we say to the rules limiting the 
numbers of new hands admitted into each trade, or to the 
rules which hinder ascent from inferior classes of workers 
to superior classes ? One does not see in such regulations 
any of that altruism by which Socialism is to be pervaded. 
Contrariwise, one sees a pursuit of private interests no less 
keen than among traders. Hence, unless we suppose that 
men's nature's will be suddenly exalted, we must conclude 
that the pursuit of private interests will sway the doings of 
all the component classes in a Socialistic society. 

"With passive disregard of others' claims goes active 
encroachment on them. ' Be one of us or we will cut off 
your means of living,' is the usual threat of each trades 
union to outsiders of the same trade. While their mem- 
bers insist on their own freedom to combine and fix the 
rates at which they will work (as they are perfectly justified 
in doing), the freedom of those who disagree with them is 
not only denied but the assertion of it is treated as a crime. 
Individuals who maintain their rights to make their own 
contracts are vilified as 'blacklegs' and 'traitors,' and meet 



222 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

with violence which would be merciless were there no legal 
penalties and no police. Along with this trampling on the 
liberties of men of their own class, there goes peremptory- 
dictation to the employing class ; not prescribed terms and 
working arrangements only shall be conformed to, but none 
save those belonging to their body shall be employed — 
nay, in some cases there shall be a strike if the employer 
carries on transactions with trading bodies that give work 
to non-union men. Here, then, we are variously shown 
by trades unions, or at any rate by the newer trades 
unions, a determination to impose their regulations without 
regard to the rights of those who are to be coerced. So 
complete is the inversion of ideas and sentiments that main- 
tenance of these rights is regarded as vicious and trespass 
upon them as virtuous. 

' ' Along with this aggressiveness in one direction there 
goes submissiveness in another direction. The coercion of 
outsiders by unionists is paralleled only by their subjection 
to their leaders. That they may conquer in the struggle, 
they surrender their individual liberties and individual judg- 
ments, and show no resentment however dictatorial may 
be the rule exercised over them. Everywhere we see such 
subordination that bodies of workmen unanimously leave 
their work or return to it as their authorities order them. 
Nor do they resist when taxed all round to support strikers 
whose acts they may or may not approve, but instead 
ill-treat recalcitrant members of their body who do not 
subscribe. 

' ' The traits thus shown must be operative- in any new 
social organization, and the question to be asked is — What 
will result from their operation when they are relieved from 
all restraints ? At present the separate bodies of men dis- 
playing them are in the midst of a society partially passive. 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



223 



partially antagonistic; are subject to the criticisms and 
reprobations of an independent press ; and are under the 
control of law, enforced by police. If in these circum- 
stances these bodies habitually take courses which override 
individual freedom, what will happen when, instead of being 
only scattered parts of the community, governed by their 
separate sets of regulators, they constitute the whole com- 
munity, governed by a consolidated system of such regu- 
lators ; when functionaries of all orders, including those 
who officer the press, form parts of the regulative organiza- 
tion, and when the law is both enacted and administered 
by this regulative organization? The fanatical adherents 
of a social theory are capable of taking any measures, no 
matter how extreme, for carrying out their views, holding, 
like the merciless priesthoods of past times, that the end 
justifies the means. And when a general socialistic organ- 
ization has been established, the vast, ramified and consoli- 
dated body of those who direct its activities, using without 
check whatever coercion seems to them needflil in the 
interests of the system (which will practically become their 
own interests) will have no hesitation in imposing their 
rigorous rule over the entire lives of the actual workers ; 
until, eventually, there is developed an official oligarchy, 
with its various grades, exercising a tyranny more gigantic 
and more terrible than any which the world has seen. 

"Let me again repudiate an erroneous inference. Any 
one who supposes that the foregoing argument implies 
contentment with things as they are, makes a profound 
mistake. The present social state is transitional, as past 
social states have been transitional. There will, I hope 
and believe, come a future social state differing as much 
from the present as the present differs from the past with 
its mailed barons and defenseless serfs. In Social Statics, 



224 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

as well as in the Study of Sociology and in Political Institu- 
tions, is clearly shown the desire for an organization more 
conducive to the happiness of men at large than that which 
exists. My opposition to Socialism results from the belief 
that it would stop the progress to such a higher state and 
bring back a lower state. Nothing but the slow modifi- 
cation of human nature by the discipline of social life can 
produce permanently advantageous changes. 

' ' A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly 
all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of imme- 
diate and radical remedies. * If you will but do this the 
mischief will be prevented.' 'Adopt my plan and the 
suffering will disappear.' 'The corruption will unques- 
ably be cured by enforcing this measure.' Everywhere 
one meets with beHefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. 
They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes 
which intensify the evils ; it is possible to change the evils 
from one form into another, and it is possible, and very 
common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to 
prevent them ; but anything like immediate cure is impos- 
sible. In the course of thousands of years mankind have, 
by multiplication, been forced out of that original savage 
state in which small numbers supported themselves on wild 
food, into the civilized state in which the food required for 
supporting great numbers can be got only by continuous 
labor. The nature required for this last mode of life is 
widely different from the nature required for the first ; and 
long-continued pains have to be passed through in remold- 
ing the one into the other. Misery has necessarily to be 
borne by a constitution out of harmony with its conditions ; 
and a constitution inherited from primitive men is out of 
harmony with the conditions imposed on existing men. 
Hence it is impossible to establish forthwith a satisfactory 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



225 



social state. No such nature as that which has filled 
Europe with millions of armed men, here eager for con- 
quest and there for revenge — no such nature as that which 
prompts the nations called Christian to vie with one another 
in filibustering expeditions all over the world, regardless 
of the claims of aborigines, while their tens of thousands 
of priests of the religion of love look on approvingly — no 
such nature as that which, in dealing with weaker races, 
goes beyond the primitive rule of life for life, and for one 
life takes many lives — no such nature, I say, can by any 
device be framed into a harmonious community. The root 
pf all well-ordered social action is a sentiment of justice, 
which at once insists on personal freedom and is solicitous 
for the like freedom of others, and there at present exists 
but a very inadequate amount of this sentiment, 

"Hence the need for further long continuance of a 
social discipline which requires each man to carry on his 
activities with due regard to the like claims of others to 
carry on their activities ; and which, while it insists that he 
shall have all the benefits his conduct naturally brings, 
insists also that he shall not saddle on others the evils his 
conduct naturally brings, unless they freely undertake to 
bear them. And hence the belief that endeavors to elude 
this discipline will not only fail, but will bring worse evils 
than those to be escaped. 

" It is not, then, chiefly in the interests of the employ- 
ing classes that Socialism is to be resisted, but much more 
in the interests of the employed classes. In one way or 
other production must be regulated ; and the regulators, 
in the nature of things, must always be a small class as 
compared with the actual producers. Under voluntary 
cooperation as at present carried on, the regulators, pur- 
suing their personal interests, take as large shares of the 



226 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

produce as they can get ; but, as we are daily shown by 
trades-union successes, are restrained in the selfish pursuit 
of their ends. Under that compulsory cooperation which 
Socialism would necessitate, the regulators, pursuing their 
personal interests with no less selfishness, could not be met 
by the combined resistance of free workers ; and their 
power, unchecked as now by refusals to work save on 
prescribed terms, would grow and ramify and consolidate 
till it became irresistible. The ultimate result, as I have 
before pointed out, must be a society like that of ancient 
Peru, dreadful to contemplate, in which the mass of the 
people, elaborately regimented in groups of lo, 50, 100, 
500 and 1,000, ruled by officers of corresponding grades 
and tied to their districts, were superintended in their pri- 
vate lives as well as in their industries, and toiled hopelessly 
for the support of the governmental organization." 

Mr. Spencer's work, From Freedom to Bondage, first 
made its appearance in this country, I believe, in the N. Y. 
World of March 22nd, 1891. As the essay contains but 
little that has not been reviewed in previous pages, it would 
be tedious to enter upon an analysis which readers will 
certainly be able to make for themselves. The Twentieth 
Century of New York, however, contained, on April 2nd, 
1 89 1, a criticism by myself from which I venture to quote, 
as it expresses, in comparatively few words, my own view 
of the value of the essay: "Mr. Spencer's argument opens 
with a statement of the progress already achieved ; a sub- 
ject upon which he is remarkably emphatic. As to this I 
care to note only that one of the proofs he adduces is ' the 
contrast between the small space which popular welfare 
then occupied in public attention, and the large space it now 
occupies, with the result that, outside and inside Parlia- 
ment, plans to benefit the millions form the leading topics, 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



227 



and every one having means is expected to join in some 
philanthropic effort.' This is curious when one considers 
Mr. Spencer's well-known hostility to private or parlia- 
mentary philanthropy, as the term is generally understood. 
He then lays down as axiomatic the proposition that ' social 
life must be carried on either by voluntary cooperation or 
compulsory cooperation ; ' and the remainder of the essay 
is devoted to a portrayal of the superiority of the existing 
system, which he describes as an 'industrial regime of 
willinghood,' over 'a r%ime of industrial obedience.' 

"It is needless to follow Mr. Spencer in his analysis of 
the evils of the military regime. What he says is by no 
means new, and is generally accepted as unquestionably 
true. What I point the finger at is his definition of our 
present system as an 'industrial regime of willinghood.' 
What one feels justified in sneering at is his complacent 
declaration that 'this voluntary cooperation (the existing 
system), from its simplest to its most complex forms, has 
the common trait that those concerned work together by 
consent.' He even particularizes. He tells us that 'the 
system of voluntary cooperation is that by which, in 
civilized societies, industry is now everywhere carried on. 
Under a simple form we have it on every farm, where the 
laborers, paid by the farmer himself and taking orders {sic) 
directly from him, are free to stay or go as they please. 

. . The general formula is not — 'Do this, or I will 
make you;' but it is — 'Do this, or leave your place and 
take the consequences.' ' And this, as Carlyle would have 
said, is — freedom ! 

' ' This idyllic picture is followed with a gloomy sketch 
of the tyrannies that Socialism, with its necessarily colossal 
directive apparatus, must engender. The argument is 
from the present to the future ; the iron discipline of the 



228 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

trades-unions and political parties of to-day gives the 
forecast of our fate beneath their rule to-morrow. 

' ' I believe, sir, that your readers will agree with me 
when I say that the freedom to take the job or 'git' is the 
cruelest of satires on liberty, and that its advancement by 
Mr. Spencer in this essay, which has been widely adver- 
tised and will be as widely read, is a piteous descent. For 
note that not a word is said as to the inequality upon 
which the contracting parties meet — the one in possession 
of all the means of life, the other bargaining for leave to 
use them. My contention is that, at the outset, the 
plaintiff's position is so evidently false as to throw the 
gravest suspicion on whatever else he may advance. Let 
us, nevertheless, have the patience to investigate. 

"Political bossism is an unquestionable and lamentable 
fact ; so are the tyranny of trades-unions, the assaults on 
'scabs,' and the many other instances of violence that 
Mr. Spencer cites. So also are land monopoly, protective 
tariffs, and a thousand similar evils too numerous to 
mention. Whence come they? That is the question we 
have to settle ; for, knowing their origin, we shall be able 
to dig down to their roots and tear them up. There is not 
one of them that does not come directly from that system 
of individual warfare which, under the denomination of 
militarism, Mr. Spencer so ruthlessly condemns. In politics 
we fight for power, with all that it implies, and we submit 
to the rule of this or that simply because it appears to us 
as the only means of winning what we feel is our individual 
fight. In trades-unionism we are engaged in a conflict 
against overwhelming odds, and we submit, therefore, still 
more implicitly to leadership. Playing each for our own 
hand we try to get a corner on the earth, and, if we cannot 
do it by seizure through the armed hand or the purse, we 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 22Q 

try the legislature. Trading, each on his own account (or, 
at best, on his ring's account), we inevitably seek the 
monopoly a protective tariff grants, however loudly we may 
cry out for free trade in other industries. If you doubt 
this look at the insincerity of the English free trade move- 
ment, in which, as soon as the manufacturers got the 
supplies of which they happened to stand in need, their 
enthusiasm promptly vanished. And so throughout. The 
tyrannies and injustices so bitterly complained of are the 
direct outcome of the individual struggle ; with individual 
combination adopted, not partially but in its entirety, they 
will all, without exception, disappear.* 

' ' ' The root of all well ordered social action, ' says Mr. 
Spencer, 'is a sentiment of justice.' Precisely. Who 
made the earth? Obviously, no one. It has come down 
to us, improved and unimproved, as a joint inheritance. 
To whom do we owe- the inventions that have put the 
muscles of the universe at our command? As obviously 
to no one of the monopolists in possession to-day, but to 
the continuous toil of countless generations. Justice and 
expediency alike demand that the rightful owners should 
be put in possession of their inheritance. This is the Alpha 
and Omega of the Socialists' demand. It is for us, as 



* " Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial world ; 
capital strives against labor, and labor against capital, lock-outs 
and strikes being the pitched battles of the struggle ; capitalists 
strive against capitalists for profits, and the list of the vanquished 
may be read in the bankruptcy court; workers strive a»^ainst 
workers for wage, and injure their own order in the fratricidal 
combat. Everywhere the same struggle, causing distress, waste, 
hatred, in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a trifling 
gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the frantic race for 
wealth. It is the struggle of the wild beasts of the forest transferred 
to the city ; the horrible struggle for existence, only in its ' civilized' 
form hearts are wrenched and torn instead of \\mhs."— Annie 
Besant, 



230 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



individuals, to see that these owners, of whom we are a 
part, be put in possession of their just inheritance. The 
details of administration they, and we, can subsequently 
settle." 

It seems desirable to say a few more words upon the 
question of "Government" — a point to which much atten- 
tion is given in The Sins of Legislators, and The Great 
Political Superstition. It is greatly misleading to say that 
' ' Government has everywhere had its origin in oppression. ' ' 
Thanks to modern investigation the genesis of written law, 
with its necessary accompaniment, an organized power for 
the enforcement of the law, has been clearly traced. In 
this particular field of inquiry Socialists have been extremely 
active, Frederick Engels (Karl Marx's illustrious co-worker) 
having done especial service. The results are well summed 
up in the new edition of Bebel's Woman and Socialism, 
and, though a translation will soon be issued in this series, 
I venture here to anticipate it in part. Bebel examines the 
various relationships between the sexes in which our fore- 
fathers indulged, and reaches finally that stage in the history 
of evolution where the ' ' Mother-right ' ' prevailed. Through- 
out that long, and most progressive, period descent was 
traced exclusively through the female members of the 
tribe. As I have already pointed out, it was the period 
when communism was in vogue. The evidence, it may 
also be remarked, is overwhelming, that during this period 
woman exercised an influence such as she is only now 
beginning again to aspire to. Bebel then traces the over- 
throw of the mother-right by the father-right, and the 
break up of the gens or family system, to make way for a 
class system founded upon property. The argument is 
again an economic on.e, economic changes carrying others 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



231 



in their train. He tells us that, as long as production 
remained in the simple stage, the earning capacity of both 
men and women was about the same ; but that, with 
increased division of labor, and the growth of invention that 
accompanied it, wealth set in, man's superiority in many 
of the industrial pursuits of the day began to declare itself, 
and he commenced to think himself superior to woman. 
The growth of population — especially in the cities of Greece, 
whose territory was very limited and comparatively unpro- 
ductive — cut a figure in the change, and woman the meri- 
torious child- bearer began to be regarded as woman the 
too-fruitful. The special skill which certain men acquired, 
and the conflicts that arose over the possession of new 
territory, gave them another thought, viz. : that he who got, 
or he who made, should keep. This private property 
grew into favor. Rome, in particular — upon whose codes 
our common law to-day rests — started with the then 
original ideas of father-right and private property. The 
gens was an integral part of Roman life, but property 
finally proved too strong for that, and tore it all to pieces. 
The entire process is well summed up in the following 
passage : 

"As production developed, and private property arose, 
the ground upon which the old family union of the gens 
had stood was cut from beneath its feet. The old ideas to 
which the gens had given birth remained, however, for 
some time to come in force. At first, after the gens had 
given way before the father- right, the equal rights of women 
were still recognized, but new elements kept exercising 
constant pressure tending to the overthrow of the old con- 
ditions. With the founding of cities began, as I have 
already shown, the distinction between agriculture and 
manufacture. The construction of dwellings and public 



232 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



buildings, ship-building, the making of tools, implements 
and weapons, the constant advances in pottery and weaving, 
all these led to the gradual establishment of a manufacturing 
class with interests that had nothing in common with the 
old geiis, and were frequently opposed to it. The intro- 
duction of slavery, and the admission of strangers to citizen- 
ship were additional elements that rendered the old gens 
an impossibility, by awakening interests that demanded the 
institution of a new regime. 

"Inheritance through the father called for settlements 
that stood in the roughest contradiction to established 
customs, and could only be carried out by authority. 
Moreover, the inequalities of fortune that qiiickly made their 
appearance ; the conflicts of interest between agriculture and 
manufacture, between master and slave, rich a^id poor, debtors 
and creditors, necessitated laws, which, on the one hand, were 
very complicated, and on the other hand, could be enforced 
only at the cost of establishing powerful machinery therefor. 
Thus arose the State as the necessary outcome of the opposing 
inte^'ests that manifested themselves under the new rigime : 
the State which, whatever its form, is always the true mirror 
of the class interest that for the time being has the upper 
hand. ' ' 

Observe the difference. Mr. Spencer speaks, as does 
the Pope, of the rights of property as sacred, inalienable 
rights that have existed from time immemorial, and have 
their origin both in the natural promptings of the instincts, 
and in the necessity for preserving the lives of parents and 
offspring alike. He speaks of Government as arising from 
the force that overthrew these rights. What is the actual 
evidence? The actual evidence is that during a long and 
most progressive period man found — not, most assuredly, 
that he could do without life's necessaries, but that those 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 233 

necessaries were amply furnished under the communistic 
system then in vogue. Moreover, it was a time of general 
peace, and furthermore it was a time when woman rose to a 
dignity she has never since attained. The actual evidence 
also is that law, and the class-ruled State, came in, not for the 
overthrow of property rights, but to maintain the inequalities 
which property rights succeeded in speedily engendering. 

To clinch the matter further yet, and dissipate any 
lingering fears occasioned by Mr. Spencer's glowing 
prognostications, I quote from a tract recently issued by 
the Fabian Society. Under the heading of ' ' What Social- 
ism is," it says: " Remember that Parliament, with all its 
faults, has always governed the country in the interest of 
the class to which the majority of its members belonged. 
It governed in the interest of the country gentlemen in the 
old days when they were in a majority in the House of 
Commons ; it has governed in the interest of the capitalists 
and employers since they won a majority by the Reform 
Bill of 1832; and it will govern in the interest of the 
majority of the people when the numbers are selected from 
the wage-earning class. Inquirers will find that Socialism 
can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner 
through democratic institutions, and that none of the 
practical difficulties which occur to everyone in his first five 
minutes' consideration of the subject have escaped the 
attention of those who have worked at it for years. Few 
now believe Socialism to be impracticable, except those 
with whom the wish is father to the thought." 

There are timid reformers who consider that, as the 
economic is the root question, it would be far better to 
confine our efforts to that, leaving such dangerous subjects 
as the woman question, religion, etc., severely alone. But 
it would be impossible, were it even desirable, to criticise 



234 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



a faulty economic system without calling attention to the 
most prominent manifestations of that faultiness. Inde- 
pendent of the fact that upon the relationship between the 
sexes depends the welfare and very existence of the race, it 
is certain that the defects of our economic system, as shown 
in compulsory marriages, impossibility of marriage, and a 
prostitution that, open or concealed, permeates all society, 
are among the severest and most telling counts in the long 
indictment that is now being brought against existing insti- 
tutions. It offers accordingly a field for criticism that we 
can by no means afford to neglect, neither can we shut our 
eyes to the fact that it is woman in particular whom the 
present system crushes with remorseless cruelty. She 
stands, therefore, sorely in need of such a champion as 
Socialism promises to be. Here, however, I have been 
chiefly concerned with pointing out the service which the 
woman question, in such hands as those of Engels and 
Bebel, has already done for Socialism, by elucidating the true 
development of that institution for the defense of monopoly 
and class-rule which to-day calls itself the State. 

The State which society, through Socialism, will ulti- 
mately succeed in establishing will be one worthy of the 
name. It will not be a machine kept running for the 
defense of robberies that imagine time can turn a wrong 
into a right, nor for the bolstering up of a class that knows 
but one religion — its own material self-interest. It will be 
simply the consensus of the people ; the general council, in 
which such mutual arrangements will be made as the cir- 
cumstances of the community may from time to time 
demand. Such a State, democratic through and through, 
is an impossibility so long as a thousand conflicting interests 
part the community into hostile camps. To put an end to 
such conflicting interests, the first inevitable step must be 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



235 



the abolition of the great division, which, since the first 
great struggles over private property, has split society from 
top to toe. That division is the one into master and 
servant, employer and employed. The wage-system is 
thus necessarily the center of the whole attack. Thus far 
we can safely tread with sure and certain foot ; that is 
unquestionably the next great struggle, and its flames are 
already beginning to light the sky. 

With service for the master abolished, the next step 
must be necessarily service for ourselves, and the only way 
in which this can be rendered possible is the putting the 
means of production and distribution — the latter being but 
a branch of the process of production — at the disposition 
of the toiler. That this will be the central aim of society 
it seems to me impossible to doubt ; that it will be easily 
accomplished I also cannot doubt, for the organization of 
industry is already so far advanced that, in many cases, 
almost all that would be necessary would be to strike the 
names of dividend-drawing parasites off the roll. Of this, 
however, I, at least, feel sure, viz. : that when society is in a 
position to make the new arrangement it is society that will 
make it. Nevertheless I think it more than likely that for 
some time to come reward will be by the community in 
proportion to the fancied value of the services done to the 
community, a value that will be calculated in various ways. 
I also think that we shall rapidly evolve to a Communism 
more and more complete, though for this, at the outset, we 
shall most assuredly not be ripe. We squabble over bread 
only when bread is scarce : with bread to be had for the 
picking up the man who would insist upon his "natural 
right" to a loaf would be a fool. If we do so evolve it will 
be a proof of Bebel's saying that "Evolution is a spiral, 
continually climbing higher, whose apex is directly perpen- 



236 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

dicular to its base." We shall return to the communism 
from which the private-property era sprang. 

The only other point I care to touch on is Mr. 
Spencer's remark that "a cardinal trait in all advancing 
organizations is the development of the regulative appara- 
tus." This is unquestionably true, and the "Trusts," which 
have created so much consternation among the ignorant, 
are the sure and certain sign of the advanced industrial 
position we have attained. They show us just exactly 
where we stand ; they demonstrate, beyond all possibihty 
of refutation, the utter folly of the dream that one can 
tinker with the social question. It is now clearly one thing 
or the other — oligarchy or democracy — plutocrats or 
people. For the " Trust " is «z^/<7<:rfl;//c Socialism. It is the 
industries of the country seized by plutocratic rings, who, 
having learned the folly of competition and adopted the 
Socialistic principle of cooperation, administer those 
industries for their own profit. It marks the definite sub- 
stitution of the "regulative apparatus" for the anarchic 
principle of free competition which our money kings have 
discovered to be ruinous as among themselves. It is this 
that free competition has ended in, even among those who 
assuredly had all the means wherewith to compete. 

Need I point out that such an autocratic Socialism, 
imposed from above, and regulated, not by the wants of the 
people, but solely by considerations of how most can be 
squeezed out of the people, is preeminently unsatisfactory? 
Surely not. What patriot thinks it advisable that his 
country should be seized, and administered to fill the 
stomachs of the army of invaders ? What, however, should 
be here insisted on is that this plutocratic invasion has not 
been deliberately planned, but that it has developed, in an 



A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 



237 



entirely natural way, from the workings of our competitive 
system, combination and regulation of the market having 
been resorted to by our plutocrats as the only method of 
saving themselves from bankruptcy. That the Trust is the 
logical development of the joint-stock company system, as 
that in its turn was a development of the private partner- 
ship system, each development corresponding to the 
demand for the larger enterprises rendered possible 
through the introduction of steam — all this goes without 
saying. Notwithstanding which so-called statesmen vex 
the country with Inter-State Commerce Laws, and similar 
abortive attempts to render combination, toward which all 
evolution moves, a criminal offense. It is certain, in a 
word, that this * ' regulative apparatus ' ' will be continually 
enlarged, and at the same time — for such is the history of 
all inventions — immensely simplified ; that it will substitute 
for countless individuals one all-powerful corporate master 
from whose decisions, as the sole employer, there will be 
no appeal ; that it will stop supply, and, by closing distil- 
leries, flour-mills, iron-works, etc., throw thousands of 
workers on the streets whenever it deems it advisable so to 
do ; and that its judgment as to the advisability will be 
guided, not by considerations of public utility, but solely 
by those of its own breeches pocket. 



238 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER IV. 
CONCLUSION. 

THIS book is an attempt to define the exact position 
of a philosopher who is quoted as an authority by 
both sides, and, as it has seemed to me, is often very 
ignorantly quoted. I have, therefore, done my best to 
point out exactly where Mr. Herbert Spencer stands. I 
have shown that those who cite him as a champion of our 
existing system should not be allowed to forget that he 
has formulated a communistic land doctrine which he has 
never taken back. On the other hand, I have endeavored 
to show that those who rail at him as a reactionist and 
enemy of progress, forget that, as an evolutionist, he has 
rendered invaluable service to thought in general, and to 
the cause of Socialism in particular. This last point I have 
striven to emphasize on every possible occasion, for it is, in 
my judgment, all-important. So long as Socialism was in 
the Utopian stage it could be brushed aside contemptuously 
as the fancy of some idle dreamer ; but when it is shown 
to be a part of the inexorable logic of growth, it presents 
a case that cannot possibly be ignored. The thoughtful 
will at once perceive that we can hinder or hasten its 
development, but that to prevent its ultimate realization 
we are completely powerless. Such a natural force as that 
which — thanks to modern invention and our cooperative 
methods oi productio7i — is now making for a "solidarity" 
that was at no previous period possible, can be guided by 
human intelligence to an issue whose success the imagin- 



CONCLUSION. 



239 



ation of to-day is quite incapable of measuring. On the 
other hand, ignorantly to oppose such a natural force will 
be to bring upon ourselves a storm beside which the French 
Revolution will shrivel into insignificance. 

This matter, therefore, is largely a matter of the head ; 
for with the hearts of the masses no serious fault is to be 
found. Our instincts are almost all for peace ; national 
antipathies are rapidly expiring ; the railroad, by annihi- 
lating distance, has made us eminently social ; the immense 
constructive work that this century has accomplished in 
the purely mechanical department has stamped its own 
character very deeply on each one of us. The thoughtful 
— and the thoughtful are much on the increase — note all 
these things, and they chafe continually at contradictions 
which seem more and more illogical. Our modern city 
life offers such obvious opportunities for cooperation, yet 
it is in city life that competition is at its fiercest. Moreover, 
city life is one that must be led in common, yet at every 
turn fresh evidence confronts us that there is actually 
nothing that we, who are brought so much together, hold 
in common. On the many other contradictions that per- 
petually plague us I do not care now to dwell ; and, indeed, 
it is always better that people should think a matter out 
for themselves. There is no lack of subjects for thought 
to-day, but there is one that is rapidly swallowing all others 
up — viz., THE Social Question. 

That is essentially the question of the age, and it is a 
question upon which we have, first, to think. Everything 
that stifles thought is an evil of the evils, whether it appear 
as an intellectual Pope who would tempt you to let him do 
your thinking for you, or as an intellectual Czar who insists 
on doing it and will banish you if you rebel. For thought 
is labor, and it is unfortunately the very labor to which the 



240 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

masses are least inclined, because it is the labor to which for 
centuries they have been least accustomed. It is also the 
labor which Nature — who honors no drafts but those of 
labor, and eventually punishes all shirks — delights especially 
to honor. To feel, and sympathize, and grow hysterical 
over the miserable muddle we are in is the easiest kind of 
work ; is indeed no work at all, and, therefore, produces 
nothing. To seize a fact or two, and thence to draw a 
hasty, superficial inference, is also useless ; and as, in such 
cases, the wish is generally father to the thought, the work 
is all distorted, and even worse than useless. 

One does not become a Socialist because of the gifts 
that Socialism has to oifer. Usually one relinquishes slowly 
orthodoxy after orthodoxy ; and with every one there is a 
wrench, for with every one a friend is lost. The reform 
people are oftentimes the worst. The free-trader cannot 
forgive you for discovering that his nostrum will not cure 
it all ; the single-tax man, when you get beyond his limits, 
thinks you are a traitor ; while, as for those who are Social- 
ists in economics, and bourgeois orthodoxists in everything 
else, they declare you are wrecking the whole movement 
by the introduction of foreign and highly dangerous sub- 
jects. My understanding of the case is this : I cannot find 
in history a shigle instance of a decided eco7iomic change that 
has not had as its companions, at every step, corresponding 
changes all along the lifie. The complaints we hear on 
every side of the decay of family life, the decay of religious 
faith, and so forth, are so many contemporary proofs of the 
truth of this position. For we have been passing, and we 
are still passing, through the first stage of a vast industrial 
revolution. 

I submit that the Socialist analysis is the most correct, 
because it is the most trulv scientific. It is the most scien- 



CONCLUSION. 241 

tific because it has been the most laborious ; and because, 
having no vested interests to serve and being only anxious 
to reach the economic truth that alone can set the wage- 
worker free, it has not allowed its wishes to be the fathers 
of its thoughts, or permitted the heart to dictate to the 
head. That capitalist competition is digging its own grave ; 
that, by having already introduced cooperative production 
on the largest scale, it has laid the framework of the future 
cooperative commonwealth ; that it is rapidly dividing this, 
and every other nation, into two distinct classes, the very 
wealthy few and the propertyless many — all these I submit 
are facts, and show the soundness of the Socialist analysis. 
I submit further that the proposition that the economic 
mold is the one from which all other institutions take their 
shape is profoundly true : has been proved so in the past, 
and is being proved so daily now. I take no interest, 
therefore, in, and expect no good whatever from the per- 
petual whine about decaying morals, the increase of crimes, 
insanity, suicide and the like, save for the insight they give 
into the rottenness of the existing order. They will not 
improve for being preached at : they will steadily grow 
worse as our present industrial system grows more and 
more impossible. To complain of this is to complain oi" 
one of Nature's most essential laws. Pain has a genuine 
function to perform ; it tells us when we are going wrong ; 
it is now loudly reminding us of our folly in retaining a 
system that has had its day. 

Mr. Spencer's scientific proofs of the necessity of liberty, 
equality of opportunity, and cooperation, to the develop- 
ment of life are invaluable ; his praises of them are, how- 
ever, mere jingles of words, so long as the worker continues 
to be separated from his tools. These truly great and 
noble ideas are but ideas so long as that eondition endures, 



242 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



and nobody knew it better than Mr. Spencer himself after 
he had written his chapter upon the land in Social Statics. 
To talk of a " regime of industrial willinghood ' ' under such 
circumstances is revolting cant, though a thousand Herbert 
Spencers should affirm it, and fill a thousand libraries with 
the attempted proof For this, above all, we one and all 
must do. We must have done with shams ; we must insist 
on truth regardless of whom the truth may seem to hurt ; 
we must hew closely to the line careless of where the chips 
may fall. Without this our labor at reform is all in vain. 
In the words of that great unmasker of shams, Thomas 
Carlyle : — " Liberty, I am told, is a Divine thing. Liberty, 
when it becomes the 'Liberty to die by starvation,' is not 
so divine." 

It is only the studious few who will dip into this volume. 
But those few are always the movers of the movers. These 
students are to be found in every class, in the drawing 
room and the garret, wherever light has chanced to strike, 
and they are now, by the very nature of the case, increasing 
with a rapidity unexampled. For here again the economic 
forces show themselves all-powerful ; here again the growing 
difficulty which the educated classes find in earning the 
simplest bread and butter is forcing them with an iron 
hand into the ranks of the discontented. It is not easy. 
Prejudice and caste are immensely strong : a man thinks 
twice before cutting himself off from his early friends, his 
business associates, and, probably above all, the women of 
his class. But nevertheless they come, and come in troops, 
for it is inevitable. The middle-class man sees nothing in 
apprenticing his son to a trade, for the destitution of the 
working classes is everywhere, proverbial. The farming 
industry is gasping for life ; and he sees nothing in putting 



CONCLUSION. 



243 



him to commercial business, for there it is notorious that 
the Httle fish are perishing by the shoal. To clerk is to be 
a slave, for now-a-days clerks are a drug in every market, 
and all clerkships are held by the most precarious of tenures. 
So he risks it in the professions, though he knows them to 
be already desperately over-crowded, gambling on the 
chance of the boy showing the unexpected talent which, 
sooner or later, manages to snatch a prize. Thence it is 
the shortest of steps to the camp of the discontented, those 
free-lances whose hunger for destruction ravages every 
existing institution with its remorseless criticism. There is 
not an old-established usage to-day that is not made the 
target of their ridicule, their solid argument, their vehe- 
ment protest ; for all such usages are seen to serve as 
buttresses of a system that treats them villainously. Thus, 
scattered though the clouds may seem to be at present, 
they are all parts of the same electrical disturbance ; they 
will all be finally united in the coming storm. That storm 
will strike upon one central point, toward which the various 
forces are already obviously beginning to converge — the 
economic system ; which, shorn of the time-honored sup- 
ports it has had in the intellectual blindness and prejudices 
of slaves, will tumble at a blow. 

What though the clouds appear at present scattered, 
and even, coming together, clash with one another? It is 
precisely because the clouds are coming together that they 
clash ; it is precisely because an enormous army, which has 
been hitherto pursuing various "isms," is now concentra- 
ting upon the economic question that there is all this war 
of words, over which the conservatives pluck up a moment's 
heart to rejoice. It is merely the necessary tumult of the 
army falling into line ; a temporary incident. This eager 
contingent of middle-class free-thinkers ; this huge detach- 



244 



ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



ment of belated farmers that has tarried so long upon the 
march — the main fact is that they are stepping to the front, 
that the recruits are coming in from every quarter all 
animated by the same divinest of discontents. The goose- 
step, and whatever other drilling may be needed, will 
develop of themselves. Given the necessary discontent 
and abhorrence of existing evils, and you have an army 
that will discipline itself, as Cromwell's Ironsides did, from 
their very anxiety to rout the enemy horse and foot. They 
may be led off on false issues for a time — as, in my humble 
judgment, the farmers are now being led— but they will 
quickly right themselves ; they may put up for a time with 
shows of truth, but they will finally insist on getting at the 
heart of truth. And the heart of the whole thing is this — 
that a man is a man, and is, however humble, incomparably 
superior to the most cunningly constructed bank-vault that 
any plutocrat may order. He is King, and before him all 
customs, however venerable by reason of their age, have 
got to courtesy. Whatever hinders his development ; 
whatever debars him from reaping the rich harvest of his 
life; whatever needlessly "cribs, cabins and confines" the 
existence of the poorest woman or child among us has got 
to go. No class, no creed, no power sheltered behind 
bayonets, or crouching behind money-bags, can be allowed 
to shut life out from access to what is necessary to life. The 
divorce between the toiler and the means of toil must neces- 
sarily be obliterated before permanent progress can be 
made ; the instinct of self-support must have opportunity 
to work. 

This truth, which stares us in the face whenever we 
deign to turn to Nature's book, is recognized, as yet, by 
but a very few. But, more and more pertinaciously the 
forces are tugging at men's elbows, and urging them to 



CONCLUSION. 



245 



look. We can cooperate with these forces, and a most 
important portion of our cooperation is the struggle with 
the forces that are urging the masses not to look. Here is 
a priest who, vowed to a form of life so unnatural that, if 
generally adopted, the whole race must perish, passes his 
days in urging the masses not to look. Here is one in 
authority who fills his mouth with promises, and guarantees 
to rule on behalf of those who have not wit enough to rule 
themselves. He too, with a thousand specious arguments, 
is busily engaged in persuading the masses not to look. 
Here is a rich man assuring the masses, by the countless 
agencies that he commands, that they were never so 
comfortably off as they are under the administration of his 
class, and that, if they undertake what they themselves 
know nothing of, they must inevitably perish. He to-day 
is desperately straining every nerve to keep them from 
looking for themselves. Yet they unquestionably have to 
look, and the task of getting them to raise their eyes falls 
almost exclusively upon the student class. It is the debt it 
owes to the class that supports it while it studies ; it is the 
thorn in the rose of knowledge. 

Our movement is all along the line. There is not a 
department of human thought or action in which the dis- 
contented cannot be of use ; there is not an ability so 
humble that it cannot do good service. History repeats 
itself, and what Wendell Phillips said thirty-eight years ago 
of the Abolition movement holds true to-day : — "Our aim 
is to alter pubHc opinion. Did we live in a market, our 
talk should be of dollars and cents, and we should seek to 
prove only that slavery was an unprofitable investment. 
Were the nation one great, pure church, we would sit down 
and reason of ' righteousness, temperance and judgment to 
come.' Had slavery fortified itself in a college, we would 



246 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

load our cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with 
arguments. But we happen to live in the world — the 
world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and 
self-interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer we 
must reach all. Our object is not to make every man a 
Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid 
in the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our 
object long before the nation is made over into saints or 
elevated into philosophers. To change public opinion we 
use the very tools by which it was formed. That is, all 
such as an honest man may touch." When those words 
were spoken the Abolitionists were still ' ' a mere handful 
of fanatics." Within seven years the death knell of chattel 
slavery had been sounded at Fort Sumter. The question 
now to be solved is, unfortunately, far larger. 



THE END. 



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